Re: Staging status of speakup

[Okash Khawaja]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 20:18:31 -0700
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 01:01:27PM +0000, Okash Khawaja wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > We have made progress on the items in TODO file of speakup driver in
> > staging directory and wanted to get some clarity on the remaining
> > items. Below is a summary of status of each item along with the
> > quotes from TODO file.
> > 
> > 1. "The first issue has to do with the way speakup communicates
> > with serial ports.  Currently, we communicate directly with the
> > hardware ports. This however conflicts with the standard serial
> > port drivers, which poses various problems. This is also not
> > working for modern hardware such as PCI-based serial ports.  Also,
> > there is not a way we can communicate with USB devices.  The
> > current serial port handling code is in serialio.c in this
> > directory."
> > 
> > Drivers for all external synths now use TTY to communcate with the
> > devices. Only ones still using direct communication with hardware
> > ports are internal synths: acntpc, decpc, dtlk and keypc. These are
> > typically ISA cards and generally hardware which is difficult to
> > make work. We can leave these in staging.  
> 
> Ok, that's fine.
> 
> > 2. "Some places are currently using in_atomic() because speakup
> > functions are called in various contexts, and a couple of things
> > can't happen in these cases. Pushing work to some worker thread
> > would probably help, as was already done for the serial port
> > driving part."
> > 
> > There aren't any uses of in_atomic anymore. Commit d7500135802c
> > "Staging: speakup: Move pasting into a work item" was the last one
> > that removed such uses.  
> 
> Great, let's remove that todo item then.
> 
> > 3. "There is a duplication of the selection functions in
> > selections.c. These functions should get exported from
> > drivers/char/selection.c (clear_selection notably) and used from
> > there instead."
> > 
> > This is yet to be done. I guess drivers/char/selection.c is now
> > under drivers/tty/vt/selection.c.  
> 
> Yes, someone should update the todo item :)
> 
> > 4. "The kobjects may have to move to a more proper place in /sys.The
> > discussion on lkml resulted to putting speech synthesizers in the
> > "speech" class, and the speakup screen reader itself
> > into /sys/class/vtconsole/vtcon0/speakup, the nasty path being
> > handled by userland tools."
> > 
> > Although this makes logical sense, the change will mean changing
> > interface with userspace and hence the user space tools. I tried to
> > search the lkml discussion but couldn't find it. It will be good to
> > know your thoughts on this.  
> 
> I don't remember, sorry.  I can review the kobject/sysfs usage if you
> think it is "good enough" now and see if I find anything
> objectionable.
> 
> > Finally there is an issue where text in output buffer sometimes gets
> > garbled on SMP systems, but we can continue working on it after the
> > driver is moved out of staging, if that's okay. Basically we need a
> > reproducer of this issue.
> > 
> > In addition to above, there are likely code style issues which will
> > need to be fixed.
> > 
> > We are very keen to get speakup out of staging both, for settling
> > the driver but also for getting included in distros which build
> > only the mainline drivers.  
> 
> That's great, I am glad to see this happen.  How about work on the
> selection thing and then I can review the kobject stuff in a few
> weeks, and then we can start moving things for 5.2?

Hi Greg,

Apologies for the delay. I de-duplicated selection code in speakup to
use code that's already in kernel (commit ids 496124e5e16e and
41f13084506a). Following items are what remain now:

1. moving kobjects location
2. fixing garbled text

I couldn't replicate garbled text but Simon (also in CC list) is
looking into it.

Can you please advise on the way forward?

Thanks,
Okash