yasr - (Yet Another Screen Reader) is an attempt at a lightweight,
portable screen reader.
yasr [ -C config file ] [ -c ] [
-s synthesizer ] [ -p synthesizer port ] [
program arg1 arg2 ... argN ]
yasr is 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 only requires that the user be able to access the
text to speech (TTS) device.
yasr was originally designed in conjunction with a
Speak-out TTS device. Yasr also attempts to support DEC-Talk, DoubleTalk,
Apollo, and ViaVoice Outloud, but more work is needed to get these to work
fully. It may be able to work with Emacspeak servers, however.
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 irrespective of whether
the user is in review mode or standard mode, but the review mode keymap is
checked first in the former case.
- -C config
file
- The configuration file that yasr should use.
- -c
- Attempts to emulate bash's -c command. It runs /bin/sh, passing it
the arguments that were passed to yasr.
- -s
synthesizer
- The TTS synthesizer to use in conjunction with yasr.
- -p synthesizer
port
- The port that the TTS synthesizer is connected to.
yasr will also fork and exec a program to run, if it (and
any optional command line arguments it needs) are given as the last command
line arguments.
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.
- b
- Say previous character.
- c
- Say character.
- d
- Say next character.
- 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.
- k
- Move up a line and read the line (currently same as up arrow).
- l
- Say current line.
- 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.
- up arrow
- Move to previous line and read the line.
- down arrow
- Move to next line and read the line.
- left arrow
- Move back one character and read the character.
- right arrow
- Move ahead one character and read the character.
- (
- Go to previous paragraph.
- )
- Go to next paragraph.
- alt-i
- Reinitialize the synthesizer.
- `
- 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 chracter.
- alt-d
- Say word.
- alt-e
- Read cursor to bottom of screen.
- 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"
- /usr/local/share/yasr/yasr.conf
- yasr configuration file.
Michael P. Gorse <mgorse@users.sourceforge.net>