Make syslinux beep?

[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux beeps
when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?

Samuel


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[Jan Buchal]

>>>>> "ST" == Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault@...> writes:

    ST> Hello, It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when
    ST> they can type boot options for the installer. It would be
    ST> helpful that syslinux beeps when it is ready to get input. What
    ST> do people think about it?
Sure, it is easy good solution.

Best
--

Jan Buchal
Tel: [phone]
Mob: [phone]


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[Sebastien Hinderer]

Hi,

> It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
> boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux beeps
> when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?

It'd be convenient, yes. In case people do not want an unconditional
beep, would it be possible to configure syslinux so that keeping a well
known combination of key pressed while booting would make it beep when
it's ready to accept options.

Sébastien.


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[Samuel Thibault]

Sébastien Hinderer, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 17:34:03 +0200, a écrit :
> In case people do not want an unconditional beep, would it be possible
> to configure syslinux so that keeping a well known combination of key
> pressed while booting would make it beep when it's ready to accept
> options.

Unfortunately a lot of BIOSes won't like that ; they will consider that
the keyboard is broken.

Samuel


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[Gaijin]

        Personally, I'd like to see a configuration option in the
installation, like a tasksel option that would reconfigure Debian for
the visually impared, running through the system and setting up what it
can.  The only problem, beyond writing such a script, is accessing it if
you're blind. <grins>  Was arguing with the Orca folks about a universal
accessability setup for Linux and creating a standard that anyone could
activate with a keystroke or command..  It took the RFC's to standardize
internet communications, but we don't have any kind of standard for
others to follow or support.  As things are, all we can hope to do is
come along behind everyone else and try to keep a totalled wreck
running.  Orca's off to a good start, but still has no standard for
the rest of the world to stand behind.

                        Michael

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 11:08:32AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
> boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux beeps
> when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?


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[Mario Lang-2]

Gaijin <gaijin@...> writes:

> Personally, I'd like to see a configuration option in the
> installation, like a tasksel option that would reconfigure Debian for
> the visually impared, running through the system and setting up what it
> can.  The only problem, beyond writing such a script, is accessing it if
> you're blind. <grins>

The activation problem is exactly what this thread is about.
In some cases, autodetection of what the user needs is possible, in particular,
if a user uses a USB braille display, we can enumerate the USB bus and
find out if a braille device is connect, then start the appropriate daemon
and so on.
But in the case of software speech or old-style serial braille
displays, it is not really possible to autodetect that the user wants to use
such features.  How we currently do this is to have
users type well-known options to the bootloader prompt blindly.
But for this to work better, it would be great to alter the
user when the prompt is actually displayed and the machine is ready
to take commands.

> Was arguing with the Orca folks about a universal accessability
> setup for Linux and creating a standard that anyone could activate
> with a keystroke or command..

I am afraid Orca is not really directly related to this thread.

> It took the RFC's to standardize internet communications, but we
> don't have any kind of standard for others to follow or support.

Well, as explained above, USB offers at least a kind of standard
for braille display users to enable autodetection.  I am not sure
how a "standard" can help us with the problem at hand.  We
are trying to define one, by implementing a workable soltuion, that is hopefully
copied by others in the future.

> As things are, all we can hope to do is come along behind everyone
> else and try to keep a totalled wreck running.

I kind of know your grief since I am a blind linux user since 11 years now.
Believe me, it was much worse in the past, things are really getting somewhere,
dont loose the hope :-).

Besides, we are talking about installing a completely
new operating system without sighted help, if I remember correctly, thats
something that until today never has worked under Windows.
As a blind Windows user, you are always dependant on someone else (sighted) to
install your OS and get the assistive technologies going.
I consider it a really big thing that at least for some groups of
users, this is already possible with the current Debian release.

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[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

Mario Lang, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 23:40:38 +0200, a écrit :
> The activation problem is exactly what this thread is about.

BTW, for the long term, I was also thinking about unconditional
preseeding of debconf from any USB stick which is insertd.  That would
permit us to have a webpage which according to the user's needs produces
a preseed file which people can just put on a USB stick which they
insert before booting the CD.

Samuel


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[Samuel Thibault]

Gaijin, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 13:31:34 -0700, a écrit :
> Personally, I'd like to see a configuration option in the
> installation, like a tasksel option that would reconfigure Debian for
> the visually impared, running through the system and setting up what it
> can.

That is already discussed in bug #471410: tasksel-data: Add an
"Accessibility" task.  Feel free to contribute in that thread.  This one
is, as Mario said, about activation.

Samuel


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[Jason White-14]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 04:40:14PM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
 
> Unfortunately a lot of BIOSes won't like that ; they will consider that
> the keyboard is broken.

Even if the key is pressed after the POST beep, but before the boot loader has
been read from the installation medium?


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[Samuel Thibault]

Jason White, le Fri 20 Jun 2008 20:27:17 +1000, a écrit :
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 04:40:14PM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>  
> > Unfortunately a lot of BIOSes won't like that ; they will consider that
> > the keyboard is broken.
>
> Even if the key is pressed after the POST beep, but before the boot loader has
> been read from the installation medium?

A lot of machines don't have a POST beep.  My laptop for instance.

Samuel


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[Jason White-14]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 11:38:29AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
 
> A lot of machines don't have a POST beep.  My laptop for instance.

I thought that might be a problem. Thanks.


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[Samuel Thibault]

Hello,

There was no answer from debian-boot on this request:

Samuel Thibault, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 11:08:32 +0100, a écrit :
> It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
> boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux beeps
> when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?

So would people consider it a problem that debian installation CDs make
a beep at syslinux stage by default?  It's just a matter of adding a ^G
in the menu title for instance.

Samuel


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[Frans Pop-3]

On Thursday 17 July 2008, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Samuel Thibault, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 11:08:32 +0100, a écrit :
> > It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
> > boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux
> > beeps when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?
>
> So would people consider it a problem that debian installation CDs make
> a beep at syslinux stage by default?  It's just a matter of adding a ^G
> in the menu title for instance.

IIRC correctly it has been discussed before and was rejected as to
annoying for the normal case. I must say I agree with that.

Especially as there's not that much magic involved in booting from CD:
just waiting for some time and hitting enter should also work. There is
no real difference between "there was no beep" and "I hit enter but
nothing happened". In both cases a disabled person is going to need help
from others to figure out the cause.

Here is one reference, but I think it came up more recently too:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2002/12/msg00323.html

We do use currently use beeps for installs to embedded devices to signal
when systems are ready for login over SSH, but in that case there are a
lot more steps to go through which 1) take longer and 2) may fail (such
as network configuration). And most importantly: those are dedicated
images and thus do not annoy other users.

Cheers,
FJP

[Sebastien Hinderer]

Hi,

> IIRC correctly it has been discussed before and was rejected as to
> annoying for the normal case. I must say I agree with that.

And I do also. However, I'd like to ask the folloing question: assuming
that this may be of some help for others, would such an annoyance really
be unacceptable ?
Do you really mean that one should not let annoying things happen, if
they may help others ?
Here we are not even talking about something that would be annoying each
time a system boots, we just talk about _installation_.

> Especially as there's not that much magic involved in booting from CD:
> just waiting for some time and hitting enter should also work. There is
> no real difference between "there was no beep" and "I hit enter but
> nothing happened".

It is not a question of pressing enter...
Disabled persons may need to type some arguments to be passed to brltty
at the syslinux prompt, e.g. to specify which serial braille device to
use since this cannot be properly autodetected.
So, if there is no way to be sure that the prompt has been reached, one
will blindly type the arguments and then press enter, and then, if
nothing happens, here will be no way to determine whether ithe problem
occurred before or after the syslinux prompt.

> In both cases a disabled person is going to need help
> from others to figure out the cause.

I am tempted to say that, although you may be right, that's not a reason
not to do everything reanoably possible to minimize the needed help.
Also, one can notice that it is often the case that the eyes reading the
screen for us in emergency situations are those of a non-expert,
sometimes non-english speaking person in France. That's why I already
noticed that, the more information I can have by myself, the better the
situation is.

Sébastien.


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[Samuel Thibault]

Frans Pop, le Thu 17 Jul 2008 07:15:38 +0200, a écrit :

> On Thursday 17 July 2008, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > Samuel Thibault, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 11:08:32 +0100, a écrit :
> > > It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
> > > boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux
> > > beeps when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?
> >
> > So would people consider it a problem that debian installation CDs make
> > a beep at syslinux stage by default?  It's just a matter of adding a ^G
> > in the menu title for instance.
>
> IIRC correctly it has been discussed before and was rejected as to
> annoying for the normal case. I must say I agree with that.

I do agree it is annoying, but as Sebastien said, it's just about
installation.  I've asked a few people, they said they wouldn't complain
if it could help others.

> Especially as there's not that much magic involved in booting from CD:
> just waiting for some time and hitting enter should also work.

How much time?  The BIOS may sometimes take quite long to boot...
What blind people currently do is waiting for hearing the CD spinning
down, but that's not always feasible, e.g. on a laptop, and they end
up booting, waiting for a few minutes, and then hope that it's at the
syslinux prompt, then type the magic stuff (with qwerty keymap without
help from the screen), type enter, wait for the kernel/udev/etc. to
boot, and eventually maybe see brltty or hear speakup starting.  On
nowadays silent laptops, that's the only point when they eventually get
feedback at last.  For a sysadmin that's not really convenient.

Samuel


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[Daniel Dalton-2]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 07:15:38AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:

> On Thursday 17 July 2008, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > Samuel Thibault, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 11:08:32 +0100, a écrit :
> > > It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
> > > boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux
> > > beeps when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?
> >
> > So would people consider it a problem that debian installation CDs make
> > a beep at syslinux stage by default?  It's just a matter of adding a ^G
> > in the menu title for instance.
>
> IIRC correctly it has been discussed before and was rejected as to
> annoying for the normal case. I must say I agree with that.

Erm, why? One beep at the boot prompt of the installer? Not even every
time your system boots, just every time you do an installation. How is
that annoying?
Don't some older computers beep anyway as you turn them on? So, if this
helps the blind, is one beep really too much to ask?
I know like 99% of people using debian installers aren't blind, but one
bheep won't really be too bad will it?

>
> Especially as there's not that much magic involved in booting from CD:
> just waiting for some time and hitting enter should also work. There is

How long? Are we playing the guessing game? Not nice if you have to do
20 installs or something.
And, its hard to tell on some machines eg. laptops and other computers,
since you try to listen when the disk spins down and this is hard to
tell...
But, the beep would solve this. I know it wouldn't help on a laptop, but
still.

> no real difference between "there was no beep" and "I hit enter but
> nothing happened". In both cases a disabled person is going to need help

Well, you would know that the boot prompt had appeared, and you could
type your boot command to either start braille or speech. So, it would
help, and... have you ever booted an installer with out seeing it? Its
not really that easy...
But I believe the beep could help a lot and its not too much to ask.

> from others to figure out the cause.

not always

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[Christian Schoepplein]

On Do, Jul 17, 2008 at 08:22:52 +1000, Daniel Dalton wrote:

>On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 07:15:38AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
>> On Thursday 17 July 2008, Samuel Thibault wrote:
>> > Samuel Thibault, le Thu 19 Jun 2008 11:08:32 +0100, a écrit :
>> > > It is a bit hard for blind people to know exactly when they can type
>> > > boot options for the installer.  It would be helpful that syslinux
>> > > beeps when it is ready to get input.  What do people think about it?
>> >
>> > So would people consider it a problem that debian installation CDs make
>> > a beep at syslinux stage by default?  It's just a matter of adding a ^G
>> > in the menu title for instance.
>>
>> IIRC correctly it has been discussed before and was rejected as to
>> annoying for the normal case. I must say I agree with that.
>
>Erm, why? One beep at the boot prompt of the installer? Not even every
>time your system boots, just every time you do an installation. How is
>that annoying?

I also can not understand why this could be annoying.

For example a beep is generated everytime gdm gets started during the
bootup of a machine. I do not know anyone who would complain of that
beep allthough it happens more ofthen then a beep during
installation....

Cheers,

  Christian

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[Frans Pop-3]

(No need to CC me

On Thursday 17 July 2008, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> I do agree it is annoying, but as Sebastien said, it's just about
> installation.  I've asked a few people, they said they wouldn't
> complain if it could help others.

It's annoying for me amongst others. I do huge numbers of installations
and even more boots of the installer during development.

It's also annoying for people using automated testing setups as they'd
have random beeps coming out of their test systems, but I'll let Joey
comment on that.

I could see myself agreeing if you can come up with an implementation that
only includes the beep for official builds (i.e. the addition of the beep
is triggered by something in debian/rules).

We'd also need some assurance that it does not break installs using serial
console and on systems using management devices (like HP's iLO [1]).
This means it needs to be tested for such cases before the change is
committed. Getting it tested would be up to you (accessibility people),
though we can possibly point you to people you could contact for that.

Cheers,
FJP

[1] http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/ilo/

[Samuel Thibault]

Daniel Dalton, le Thu 17 Jul 2008 20:22:52 +1000, a écrit :
> But, the beep would solve this. I know it wouldn't help on a laptop, but
> still.

Why wouldn't it help on a laptop?  If there is no internal speaker maybe
you could use headphone?

Samuel


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