YASR ("Yet Another Screen Reader") is my attempt at a lightweight, portable screen reader. It works by opening a shell in a pty and intercepting all user input/output, maintaining a window of what should be on the screen by looking at the codes and text sent to the screen. It thus uses no Linuxisms such as /dev/vcsa0 and does not necessarily need to be setuid root (the only requirement being that the user be able to access the tts device). Yasr is developed under GNU/Linux, but I have attempted to port it to FreeBSD, and it should work on similar Unix-like operating systems with minor tweaking.

By default, yasr will attempt to communicate with a synthesizer via speech-dispatcher (using a client name of "yasr"), but it can also talk to Emacspeak servers or directly to a few synthesizers. See yasr.conf for a list of possible settings.

To install, see the INSTALL file.

By default, yasr.conf will be copied into /usr/local/share/yasr. If you want your own customised yasr configuration file, you should copy yasr.conf to your home directory as .yasr.conf, and adjust appropriately. ~/.yasr.conf is checked first. This file contains all of yasr's keybindings and options, which can be redefined by modifying the file. Most parameters can now also be changed from within yasr.

Currently yasr has two sets of keymaps, one for "review mode" (ie, reviewing the screen) and one for the standard mode. Keys defined for the standard mode are checked whether the user is in review mode or standard mode, but the review mode keymap is checked first in the former case. Following is a list of keys and their functions that are defined by default. Keys preceeded by [n] can optionally be preceeded by a number.

-- Review mode --

spacebar: say review cursor position ^: move to the first character on the line, and say word $: move to the last character on the line, and say word [n]b: say previous character, or move left n characters [n]c: say character, or move to character n on the line and say it [n]d: say next character, or move right n characters e: read from cursor to bottom of screen f: search for text on the screen. <: search from cursor to top of screen, using the previously-entered search string.

: search from cursor to bottom of screen, using the previously-entered search string. [n]k: move up a line and read the line (currently same as up arrow) [n]l: say current line, or jump to line n and read it [n]m: move down a line and read the line (currently same as down arrow) n: bypass (send directly to the application) t: read from top to cursor. w: read entire screen. z: move to beginning of previous word and read the word. x: move to beginning of next word and read the word. [n]up arrow: move to previous line and read the line. (tbd -- allow up and down arrow to read a word or character instead of the line if desired) [n]down arrow: move to next line and read the line. [n]left arrow: move back one character and read the character. [n]right arrow: move ahead one character and read the character. (: go to previous paragraph ): go to next paragraph `: read the ASCII value of the current character

standard mode (these keys also work in review mode)

ctrl-a: say application cursor position. ctrl-l: say line. ctrl-n: bypass ctrl-x: flush speech buffer alt-b: say previous character alt-c: say character alt-d: say word alt-e: read cursor to bottom of screen alt-i: reinitialize the synthesizer alt-k: say previous line alt-l: read line alt-m: read next line alt-r: toggle review mode alt-t: read top to cursor alt-w: read entire screen alt-x: silence speech. like ctrl-x but will continue to be silent until a key is pressed (pressing alt-x a second time will start speech again, for example) ctrl-alt-k: keyboard wizard. Allows the user to move, copy, or delete keybindings from within yasr. ctrl-alt-o: options menu. Allows the user to set options from within yasr. ctrl-alt-s: save configuration to disk. alt-enter: disable yasr. Yasr is silent and ignores all keys when disabled. Press again to re-enable. Note: this key is defined in the [options] section as "DisableKey"

Suggestions, patches, etc. welcome.

-Michael P. Gorse [email protected]