An Intro from A Debian User

Chime Hart

6 Apr 2024 6 Apr '24

7:45 p.m.

Well, 2nd try, as I must have posted to the subscription address instead. I am still running Debian SID on my main machine with a screen-reader, Speakup, as I am totally blind. Meanwhile, I wanted to try a newer screen-reader, called Fenrir on a laptop. So, we switched over to Arch. While at times I find the 2 package managers confusing, I like an aspect of a much newer kernel. An issue, I cannot find a smaller font which will provide many more lines. So far only 67, but when I was in Debian with this same laptop, I had 135. Can any1 please suggest a font which will do the trick? Storm, who maintains Fenrir says I would need a font which supports utf8, so Fenrir will read. I am having glowing support from Storm as well as Didier, an author of Slint, another accessable distro. Thanks so much in advance Chime

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David C. Rankin

7 Apr 7 Apr

10:20 a.m.

On 4/6/24 14:45, Chime Hart wrote:

...

ell, 2nd try, as I must have posted to the subscription address instead. I am still running Debian SID on my main machine with a screen-reader, Speakup, as I am totally blind. Meanwhile, I wanted to try a newer screen-reader, called Fenrir on a laptop. So, we switched over to Arch. While at times I find the 2 package managers confusing, I like an aspect of a much newer kernel. An issue, I cannot find a smaller font which will provide many more lines. So far only 67, but when I was in Debian with this same laptop, I had 135. Can any1 please suggest a font which will do the trick? Storm, who maintains Fenrir says I would need a font which supports utf8, so Fenrir will read. I am having glowing support from Storm as well as Didier, an author of Slint, another accessable distro. Thanks so much in advance Chime

You are in luck! Arch has a wide selection of fonts to choose from. In fact the standard fonts, DeJavu or Droid font render well at 5 or 6 px which would easily give 135 lines or so. You can simply search with pacman on "ttf" and obtain the literally hundreds of true-type fonts available to install. To search for the font packages alone, simply use: pacman -Ssq (the addition -q removes the indented line of discription which I find distracting when scanning through the list) After you have a handful you are considering just run pacman -Ss your list of fonts here and you will get the package name and full description. (much easier to make sense of a dozen or so packages and descriptions that 200 with the descriptions sprawled all over the screen. Between the two package managers Apt and pacman, I've found pacman much simpler to use and much more user friendly. No need to remember what you can do in Apt and what you need dkpg for. With Arch, it's all pacman and its sub-functions. (which are quite logical and easy to use) From a screenreader standpoint, all of the pacman features have well-written help files, so simply typing, for example: pacman -S -h Will output a concise list of option for usage of the repository sync function which should be able to be read quite well by your reader. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.

Chime Hart

12:18 p.m.

Thank you David for your prospectives. I tried your pacman commands, but somehow they didn't work out. In this version they are useing "yay" for updates. Yesterday we tried alot of console fonts, of which yes it became 135 lines, but Fenrir basicly stopped talking. There was 1 font which increased to 77 lines, but had artafacts. It was an ruscii_8x8.psfu.gz I did ask 2 maintainers of Fenrir if there were a limit in number of lines? Will continue exploring. Chime

Aaron Liu

7:38 p.m.

Ey, yay is just a wrapper for pacman. If running pacman tells you that it has a permission issue, you should run the commands as root, e.g. by prefixing them with sudo. All pacman commands should also work on yay as long as you replace "pacman" with "yay". Generally, in the Arch wiki, all lines prefixed with # mean that you should run the command as root. -- Cheers, Aᴀʀᴏɴ

Rein Fernhout (Levitating)

10 Apr 10 Apr

11:34 p.m.

To avoid confusion I want to add that yay itself should not be run as root. yay will prompt for a password once it needs elevated privileges. pacman can be invoked safely with sudo. On 2024-04-07 21:38, Aaron Liu wrote:

...

Ey,

yay is just a wrapper for pacman. If running pacman tells you that it has a permission issue, you should run the commands as root, e.g. by prefixing them with sudo. All pacman commands should also work on yay as long as you replace "pacman" with "yay". Generally, in the Arch wiki, all lines prefixed with # mean that you should run the command as root.

u34＠net9.cf

7 Apr 7 Apr

2:06 p.m.

New subject: Console, VT, non X or wayland, fonts (Was: An Intro from A Debian User)

"David C. Rankin" wrote:

...

On 4/6/24 14:45, Chime Hart wrote:

...
ell, 2nd try, as I must have posted to the subscription address instead. I am still running Debian SID on my main machine with a screen-reader, Speakup, as I am totally blind. Meanwhile, I wanted to try a newer screen-reader, called Fenrir on a laptop. So, we switched over to Arch. While at times I find the 2 package managers confusing, I like an aspect of a much newer kernel. An issue, I cannot find a smaller font which will provide many more lines. So far only 67, but when I was in Debian with this same laptop, I had 135. Can any1 please suggest a font which will do the trick? Storm, who maintains Fenrir says I would need a font which supports utf8, so Fenrir will read. I am having glowing support from Storm as well as Didier, an author of Slint, another accessable distro. Thanks so much in advance Chime

You are in luck!

Is Chime Hart basically looking for fonts to the console, also known as virtual console, VT, non related to X or Wayland? Can Chime Hart add more details about his debian preferred fonts? Details such as the name of the font, or the file name? In debian, must he loads the preffered fonts explicitly, or does he get them by default? If he must load them explicitly, how does he do that? Are there other details he sees relevant? -- u34

Chime Hart

2:10 p.m.

New subject: Console, VT, non X or wayland, fonts (Was: An Intro from A Debian User)

Hi U34: While I have a desktop I can use, I mostly enjoy 24consoles. In Debian I load this particular font manually, which doubles an amount of lines from the defalt sudo setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Lat15-VGA8.psf.gz Yes, loading this in Arch does also increase lines to 135 but I have littl2no speech. Thanks in advance Chime

u34＠net9.cf

7:14 p.m.

New subject: Console, VT, non X or wayland, fonts (Was: An Intro from A Debian User)

Chime Hart wrote:

...

Hi U34: While I have a desktop I can use, I mostly enjoy 24consoles. In Debian I load this particular font manually, which doubles an amount of lines from the defalt sudo setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Lat15-VGA8.psf.gz Yes, loading this in Arch does also increase lines to 135 but I have littl2no speech. Thanks in advance Chime

Never tried it. Since you mentioned it, Does it work for you in Debian? Does https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Speech_dispatcher helpful? In general, if you are fluent in Debian, it might be helpful to follow what Debian does, keeping in mind that things in arch are similar, but not exactly the same. In addition, wiki.archlinux.org is a great source for information. Also note that since they are useing "yay" for updates , it could be you have an arch derivative. While this list is for native archlinux. Once again, depending on your experince and requirments, the implications are different for different users. -- u34

Chime Hart

7:43 p.m.

New subject: Console, VT, non X or wayland, fonts (Was: An Intro from A Debian User)

Well, u34, glad to see additional replies. Sure speech-dispatcher is how we connect voices. That specific font works wonderfully for me in Debian, but I am useing a different screen-reader. Now, will examine newer responses. Chime

Lime In a Jacket (Aaron Liu)

2:46 p.m.

New subject: Console, VT, non X or wayland, fonts (Was: An Intro from A Debian User)

Not sure what you mean, fonts are universal and can be used anywhere, including X, Wayland, and Terminals. You do not have to download separate fonts for terminals. I don't see what anything you've mentioned has any bearing on this. Cheers, Aᴀʀᴏɴ

Ralph Corderoy

2:55 p.m.

New subject: Console, VT, non X or wayland, fonts (Was: An Intro from A Debian User)

Hi Aaron,

...

fonts are universal and can be used anywhere, including X, Wayland, and Terminals.

See ‘font formats’ in setfont(8). -- Cheers, Ralph.

u34＠net9.cf

6:55 p.m.

New subject: Console, VT, non X or wayland, fonts (Was: An Intro from A Debian User)

Ralph Corderoy wrote:

...

Hi Aaron,

...
fonts are universal and can be used anywhere, including X, Wayland, and Terminals.

See ‘font formats’ in setfont(8).

-- Cheers, Ralph.

Or https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fonts/Bitmaps_formats [PC Screen Font](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Screen_Font) (PSF) used by the Kernel for console fonts, not supported by Xorg (for Unicode PSF files the extension is psfu) -- u34

Dave Howorth

7:37 p.m.

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 12:45:54 -0700 (PDT) Chime Hart wrote:

...

Well, 2nd try, as I must have posted to the subscription address instead. I am still running Debian SID on my main machine with a screen-reader, Speakup, as I am totally blind. Meanwhile, I wanted to try a newer screen-reader, called Fenrir on a laptop. So, we switched over to Arch.

FWIW, fenrir is available on Debian https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fenrir

u34＠net9.cf

8:16 p.m.

New subject: Debian has a fenrir package while arch has fenrir in the aur

Dave Howorth wrote:

...

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 12:45:54 -0700 (PDT) Chime Hart wrote:

...
Well, 2nd try, as I must have posted to the subscription address instead. I am still running Debian SID on my main machine with a screen-reader, Speakup, as I am totally blind. Meanwhile, I wanted to try a newer screen-reader, called Fenrir on a laptop. So, we switched over to Arch.

FWIW, fenrir is available on Debian https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fenrir

There are https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fenrir-git https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fenrir I agree in general, an aur package is harder to deal with compared to a binary, package manger installed able, package. In addition, the debian package could be, and could be not, more strongly supported by the reader manufacture. -- u34

Chime Hart

8:23 p.m.

New subject: Debian has a fenrir package while arch has fenrir in the aur

Well u34-and-All, at least 1 of the maintainers of Fenrir prefers Arch. We tried running Fenrir on my main Debian machine, but Fenrir needs to run as root or with sudo, through spd-say. However, for some reason I only have sound running spd-say as a user. Meanwhile the laptop has no such sound issue. We wanted to experiment with Fenrir, so trying on a laptop is a useful experiment. OK, just received a message from an author of Fenrir. Chime

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Aaron Liu
Chime Hart
Dave Howorth
David C. Rankin
Lime In a Jacket (Aaron Liu)
Ralph Corderoy
Rein Fernhout (Levitating)
u34＠net9.cf

An Intro from A Debian User

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