"What is that?"-Software for Linux

Recognizing of consumer durables which cannot be distinguished by touching

With the aid of the software "What is that?" and a barcode hand scanner, which is connected by the keyboard connector of the computer, barcodes, which are already present on a packaging or which were generated individually by another program (is not supplied), can be read, assigned to any text and retrieved any number of times by reading the barcode again.

The software can be downloaded free of charge by clicking on here.
Please read the README file for installation instructions.

This program has a built-in interface to access a speech output program.
Every speech output program which can be called from the command line with the text to speak as the parameter, can be used.
I have tested it with the Festival speech output which is also used as the default setting.
For example, on a Ubuntu system, Festival can be installed via the Synaptics package manager or downloaded and compiled from the website http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
It is also possible that the support of my program for speech output program can be disabled if you already use a screen reader, e.g. a braille line.

In order that the barcodes in the supplied sample file (written in German) are recognized properly, the barcode handscanner has to be set up in "lower case" mode.

System requirements:
Desktop- or Tower computer, Linux 2.0.36 or higher, speech output (see above) or screen reader (e.g. braille line), barcode hand scanner with keyboard wedge

Last updated: 27 January 2008


Ulrich Greve
E-Mail: blindsoftware1@tichnut.de


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