Emacspeak-8.0 (BlackDog) Release Notes

Announcing Emacspeak-8.0 (BlackDog)

For Immediate Release

San Jose, Calif., (May 1, 1998)
Emacspeak Re-Establishes User-Centric Computing
--Interactive Accessibility Provides Speech-Enabled Desktop

What Is It?

Emacspeak is a fully functional audio desktop that provides complete eyes-free access to all major 32 and 64 bit operating environments. By seamlessly blending all aspects of the Internet such as Web-surfing and electronic messaging into the audio desktop, Emacspeak enables speech access to local and remote information with a consistent and well-integrated user interface.

Major Enhancements

  1. Efficient navigation and browsing of structured and multicolumn WWW pages:
    1. Browse tables by either row or column.
    2. Automatically generated table of contents
  2. Single click access to RealAudio content from anywhere on the Emacspeak desktop.
  3. Speech-enabling extensions for the following:
    1. Customizing Emacs: emacspeak-custom.el
    2. Buffer specific navigation: emacspeak-imenu.el
    3. Java Development Environment: emacspeak-jde.el
    4. Browsing Software: emacspeak-speedbar.el
    5. Browsing Multiple Mail Spools: emacspeak-mspools.el
    6. Developing Python Software: emacspeak-python.el
  4. Additional user-visible enhancements:
    1. Dired Improvements: emacspeak-dired.el
    2. Running Remote Emacspeak Sessions: emacspeak-remote.el
    3. Terminal Enhancements: emacspeak-eterm.el
    4. Speech-Enabled Menubar Support
    5. Enhanced Navigation In Completion Buffers
    6. Emacspeak Clipboard
See the Emacspeak distribution for details.

Independent Test Results

Independent test results have proven that unlike some modern software, Emacspeak-98 can be easily uninstalled without adversely affecting the continued performance of the computer. These same tests also revealed that once uninstalled, the user stopped functioning altogether.

Industry experts welcomed these results as a refreshing breath of Courage Certainty and Clarity (CCC) at a time when users are reeling from the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) unleashed by complex software systems backed by even more convoluted press releases.

Speaking with Aster Labrador this morning, the creator of Emacspeak pointed out that these results once again emphasize the user-centric design of Emacspeak;

It is the user --and not the computer-- that stops functioning when Emacspeak is uninstalled!

History

Emacspeak-8.0 --(AKA Emacspeak-98++) code named BlackDog-- is a major upgrade to the speech output extension to Emacs. Emacspeak-95 (code named Illinois) was released on the Internet in May 1995 as the first complete speech interface to UNIX workstations. The subsequent release, Emacspeak-96 (code named Egypt) made available in May 1996 provided significant enhancements to the interface. Emacspeak-97 (Tennessee) went further in providing a true audio desktop. Emacspeak-98 integrated Internetworking into all aspects of the audio desktop to provide the first fully interactive speech-enabled WebTop. This release re-establishes user-centric computing as demonstrated in the test results described earlier in this announcement.

Obtaining Emacspeak

Visit Emacspeak at http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman --You can also pick up emacspeak via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/raman/emacspeak/. You can subscribe to the emacspeak mailing list emacspeak@cs.vassar.edu by sending mail to the list owner greg e. priest-dorman.

About Emacspeak

Based at Cornell (NY) http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman --home to some of the most innovative auditory interfaces on the WWW-- Emacspeak is mirrored world-wide by an international netwrok of software archives and bundled with all major Linux distributions. The Emacspeak mailing list is archived at Vassar --the home of the Emacspeak mailing list-- thanks to Greg Priest-Dorman.

Contact Information

Press/Analyst Contact: Aster Labrador
CopyWrite )C( Aster Labrador. All Writes Reserved.
BlackDog (DM) and Labrador (DM) are Registered Dogmarks of Aster Labrador.
All other dogs belong to their respective owners.

Previous Release Notes

Here is a link to the release notes for the previous major release, Emacspeak-7.0
Email: raman@adobe.com
Last modified: Fri May 1 07:09:39 1998