Parijan (परीजन) - Indian tongues on the computer

परीजन

Parijan (परीजन) - Indian tongues on the computer

DEMO VERSION

Introduction:

Accessibility is the development of a computing system to be accessible to everyone and Usability is the ability to use those systems for accessing information and gaining knowledge consequently.

So far, Accessibility has remained expensive and within the domain of English Language computing. With initiatives by many GNU/Linux developers, Open Source Community and C-DAC, Mumbai, this Accessibility Technology have also started moving towards supporting Indian Languages on the computer.

It's about helping the non-disabled understand the disabled from the non-disabled perspective.

In the context, Parijan essentially aids disabled (specially visually challenged) to readout Desktop screen in Marathi and Hindi.

Usage:
TO ENABLE SPEECH WITH ORCA*

Login Screen

For speech: ctrl + s

For Magnifier: ctrl + m

For Both: ctrl + g

Running orca (Properties) insert + space

Quitting orca insert + q

TO ENABLE TOOL-TIPS ACCESSIBLE

Currently Orca doesn't speakout tool-tips which Gnopernicus does.

Run 'Gnopernicus'* and set Speech Drivers to the particular voice (viz. hindi_NSK_diphone)

* Screen Reader using Indian Language Enabled Text-To-Speech engine (festival) at a back-end on Debian Sid

ToDos :- Live and/or Installable CD

Keep track of the blog for "Notes on Indic (Hindi and Marathi TTS)"

KDE Startup troubleshoot !

This would be my comeback after a long long gap...

Started this blog with full enthusiasm, but then I always wonder what to post here !!!

Meanwhile I came across certain issues pertaining to my home and office PC (using KDE desktop), I could resolve that too without "google" (no network) :-)

Some workaround towards kdm start problem.

For a long time I was facing some problem with my Display Manager System (mainly KDM). Frequently I was left with the console login with the message 'KDM already running' but there were no graphical display at all.

Since there was no network access for last few days I took an opportunity to rectify that issue and finally I got the solution :-)

Reason:

While booting process when daemons services starts 1stly program checks whether that particular service is already running or not by getting it's pid, if it is then 'xxx already running' message is displayed. Same is the case with kdm and is controlled by /etc/init.d/kdm shell script which 'starts or stops the X display manager'. It firstly checks whether kdm is already running or not by matching it's pid with /var/run/kdm.pid if it matches it just displays the message 'kdm already running' without seeing whether kde has started or not. But if we comment or remove the entry of pid from /var/run/kdm.pid then problem solves. May be since there is no pid available in /var/run/kdm.pid to match program has to start kdm forcefully. Also check for entry of exec 'startkde' in /home/user/.xinitrc.

Even if solution seems to be workable, it is not desirable for novice end user. To get rid of this situation steps below worked for me (knoppix 3.8):

Default display manager can be set by making it's entry to /etc/X11/default-display-manager as /usr/bin/kdm (if one want kdm to be default) OR by editing /etc/init.d/kdm script.

Then either remove the entry of pid from /var/run/kdm.pid or comment it out.

In next login I never faced this kind of problem again :-)

Breakthrough !!!