TDSR

This is a fork of the popular console-based screen reader called tdsr. It has been tested under macOS, Linux and FreeBSD. It might also run on other *nix systems, but this hasn't been tested. Compatibility is not guaranteed between versions.

What works

• Reading output
• Reading by line, word and character
• cursor keys (waits some amount of time and speaks)

Changes since fork

This is a fork and there have been some minor changes:

• now installable via pip or pipx
  • you no longer have to clone the repo, but you can if you want
• config file now lives in ~/.config/tdsr/tdsr.cfg (but we still respect the old location)
• major linting changes to use spaces instead of tabs
• adds a TDSR_ACTIVE=true env var setting

Requirements

• Python 3
• speech server

Requirements for development

• poetry, which can be installed with pipx install poetry

Installation

macOS

1. Install Python 3. If using Homebrew, brew install python3.
2. Install pipx. (we recommend pipx because it uses a python environment to install the code, so that you don't upset the balance of your system level pythong packages.) If using homebrew, you can install it with brew install pipx.
3. pipx install tdsr2

Linux

1. Install Python 3 and Speech Dispatcher. They should be available from your package manager. (on debian/ubuntu you can do sudo apt install speech-dispatcher) You may also need to install Speech Dispatcher's Python bindings, if they were packaged separately by your distro.

Terminal setup

Open Terminal preferences, under Profiles check Use Option as Meta key.

Keys

(alt refers to the meta key.)

• alt u, i, o - read previous, current, next line
• alt j, k, l - read previous, current, next word
• alt m, comma, dot - read previous, current, next character
• alt k twice - spell current word
• alt comma twice - say current character phonetically
• alt c - config.
• alt q - quiet mode on/off. When on, text is not automatically read.
• alt r - start/end selection.
• alt v - copy mode. Press l to copy the line the review cursor is on, or s to copy the screen.

Configuration

Once in the config menu, you can use:

• r - set rate.
• v - set volume (value between 0 and 100).
• p - toggle symbol processing.
• d - set cursor delay (in MS). The default is 20.
• l - Toggle pausing at newlines.
• s - Toggle repeated symbols
• Enter - exit, saving the configuration.

Symbols

Symbols can be added in the configuration file (~/.config/tdsr/tdsr.cfg), under the symbols section.

The format is:

character code = name

Because of how the config system works, it's best to do this with one TDSR open, then exit and re-launch to see the changes.

Plugins

Custom key binds and handlers can be added via the plugins and commands section of the config files and a python module in the plugins directory that exports the following method signature:

# Name: parse_output
# Parameters: an array of strings (the lines from the terminal)
# Returns: an array of strings (the things to speak)
def parse_output(lines):
    return ["a list of things to say"]

Config file

The config file lives in ~/.config/tdsr/tdsr.cfg, but if you still have a file at ~/.tdsr.cfg, we will respect it and ignore the previous path. In the config file you add to the plugins and commands section to modify the shortcut and terminal command that has been run.

Required: [plugins] The plugin section maps to a letter you press with alt to trigger the plugin.

Optional: [commands] The command section is a regex of the command you ran previous to triggering the plugin (this minimizes processing time)

Optional: A regex to indicate the start of your prompt line in your terminal

Example

To add a shortcut for alt d to trigger a plugin called my_plugin add the following under [plugins]

my_plugin = d

If you have sub folders, separate them with a dot e.g. for plugins/me/my_plugin

me.my_plugin = d

To specify a command of echo "hi" (which makes parsing slightly more efficient) add the following under [commands]

my_plugin = echo "hi"

Use dots for sub folders, like the plugin config. You can use a regular expression to make it more flexible, e.g. to specify a command of echo "hi" or echo "bye"

my_plugin = echo "(hi|bye)"

The default prompt is match anything, if you use zsh you can use the following regular expression under [speech]:

prompt = ^➜\s{2}.+✗?

Errors

If you hear "error loading plugin" followed by an error, you can launch tdsr in debug mode

~/tdsr --debug

And search the logs for "Error loading plugin" to see more details

Repeating symbols

Symbols you would like condensed down to "42 =" instead of "= = = =" you can specify under the speech section

repeated_symbols_values = -_=!

Development

If you would like to develop locally, follow these steps to test things:

1. clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/jessebot/tdsr.git
2. go into repo directory: cd tdsr
3. install the local virtual env: poetry install
4. get into a poetry environment. (I use poetry shell to get into the virtual env. this requires you to run pipx inject poetry poetry-plugin-shell to install the shell plugin for poetry.) If using poetry shell plugin, run poetry shell.

From there you can run tdsr and it will pull your live developed version of the code as you change things. Please remember to bump the version in pyproject.toml if contributing back to this codebase, and then a github workflow will run when your pull request is merged to main to automatically release the new version that people can install with pipx.

License

Copyright (C) 2016, 2017 Tyler Spivey

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Changes after 2024 are from @stormdragon2976 and @jessebot.