Installing speechd-el with word echo, Semi OT: The Big Deal About Emacs

[Milan Zamazal]

>>>>> "VT" == Veli-Pekka T?til? <vtatila at gmail.com> writes:

    VT> I don't use Emacs or Linux for mail just yet, so I'll reduce to
    VT> more conventional quoting in stead.

Absolutely no problem, most Emacs users use the conventional style.

    VT> Does woman have aesy means of jumping to the next/prev switch
    VT> (by regexp matcing) or the next/prev heading in a man page? 

Yes, these are `n' and `p' keys.  You can learn such bindings by several
ways in Emacs:

- WoMan has its own Info manual, look for it after `C-h i'.

- When you visit a man page, "WoMan" menu is available (note that Emacs
  menus change according to buffer modes), try `M-`' (meta + backquote).

- `C-h b' lists all currently active key bindings.

- `C-h m' describes current buffer modes.

- There are other useful help commands, try `C-h C-h'.

    VT> If only Emacs would use PCRE regexp, I'd be even more at home.

This is not much different, the most visible difference is that Emacs
regexps use backslashes before most special characters (i.e. \(\), \{\},
etc.).

    VT> On a side note, can one redirect shell mode I/O from and to a
    VT> named buffer or register directly? 

I don't think so.  But there are several ways to do it:

- There is `M-x shell-command'.

- Use keyboard macros to define a shortcut for something like
  `C-SPC C-c C-p M-x write-region RET something RET'.

- There is another shell mode, oriented on better integration of shell
  and Emacs, available through `M-x eshell'.  I personally prefer the
  standard shell, but Eshell contains some nice tricks, unfortunately
  not very well documented.

- Advanced users can write a simple Elisp function for this.

    VT> WEll shell mode does not iether, but you can have n shells open
    VT> and switch to them by name or toggle betweeen recent ones.

BTW, look at dired-dwim-target variable if you don't know it.  It often
makes copying and moving operations in Dired easier.  And look at Tramp
for remote/root etc. access to files.

    VT> how ancient is the mail support, can one easily use Gmail in
    VT> Emacs meaning IMAP and SSL?

I don't have any experience with Gmail, but generally Gnus supports IMAP
with SSL.  Gnus is an Emacs mail, news, RSS and whatever else reader.
It's extremely powerful and provides integration of many sources into a
uniform interface.  But it's also quite complex and not easy to start to
use.  But if you look for a powerful email, news, etc. reader equipped
with Emacs editing and speech output facilities, it's worth to look at
it.

    VT> When I've learned enough, I might do a page called the big deal
    VT> about Emacs for the blind. 

Yes, documentation always helps a lot!

    >> (add-to-list 'load-path "/some/load/path/here")
    
    VT> Ah yes, that's the ticket. I thought it would be cons, car and
    VT> cdr again. 

Yes, you could do a similar thing by

  (setq load-path (cons "/some/load/path/here" load-path))

But add-to-list is better as it doesn't add the item to the list if it's
already present there.

    VT> Which reminds me, can one tell dirEd to use Gnome file
    VT> associations? 

No.

    VT> If not, I could probably do a Perl script if I know the source
    VT> and target formats. 

For the source format, look at Dired Manual, section "Shell Command
Guessing".

Regards,

Milan Zamazal