[Emacspeak] Re: basic questions about Emacspeak

[Ishe Chinyoka <ishechinyoka@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ryan,

To answer some of your questions, I will quote them inline: 
On Sun, Feb  6, 2022 at 07:43  Ryan Mann via Emacspeak 
<emacspeak(a)emacspeak.org> wrote:
> Hello.  Please excuse my ignorance about Emacspeak.  I have a 
> few basic questions.
> 1.  For those who use Emacspeak, what benefits do you get over 
> using
> other screen readers like Speakup or Fenrir with Emacs?

The other screen-readers can work for all the applications, 
including to
some extent Emacs. However, Emacspeak only works in Emacs. Its 
advantage
is that it only voices the interface of Emacs in a way other
screen-readers cannot do. Certainly, it has got some setbacks, but 
you
can hack your way through Lisp code. I personally do not like its 
lack
of continuous reading with movement of the point, but then this is 
a
subject for another day.

I normally use Fenrir as my primary screen-reader outside Emacs.


> 2. From what I understand, Emacspeak can be used for things like 
> web
> browsing and email. Is this the case? If so, how is that 
> accomplished?
> Are these things built into Emacspeak or are there addons for 
> Emacs
> that need to be downloaded?

True, you can browse within Emacs using its built in browser. You 
can
browse most sites without issues. It uses w3m as its browser.

As for email, you can install a number of packages from Elpa  as 
your
clients. As for me, since 2018, I had been hooked to mu4e which is 
my
primary email client. I do not have even Thunderbird on my machine 
as
all my mail is done within Emacs. Other clients include gnus, 
notmuch,
wanderlust --- but I never tried them. Outside Emacs, I sometimes 
use
Mutt. But then this is a matter of choice.

My primary browsing though is not in Emacs, and for that I use 
Firefox.
I only browse within Emacs when I have to click links of certain
articles that I may need to save on disk.

As for the next question,


> 3. If web browsing can be done with Emacs and Emacspeak, are you
> limited to text based web sites like you are with other text 
> based
> browsers such as Lynx or can you access the same web sites you 
> can
> with graphical browsers such as Chrome and Firefox?


Most text-based sites can be browsed, but I came across certain 
sites
where I got message about browser not being supported. I think 
others
will also provide their own experiences.

Cheers,

Ishe

>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, 
while bad people will find a way around the laws.
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