1# ChromeVox on Desktop Linux 2 3## Starting ChromeVox 4 5On Chrome OS, you can enable spoken feedback (ChromeVox) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Z. 6 7If you have a Chromebook, this gives you speech support built-in. If you're 8building Chrome from source and running it on desktop Linux, speech and braille 9won't be included by default. Here's how to enable it. 10 11## Compiling the Chrome OS version of Chrome 12 13First follow the public instructions for 14[Chrome checkout and build](https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code). 15 16Edit `.gclient` (in `chromium/`) and at the bottom add: 17 18``` 19target_os = ["chromeos"] 20``` 21 22Run `gclient sync` to update your checkout. 23 24Then create a GN configuration with "chromeos" as the target OS, for example: 25 26``` 27gn args out/cros 28``` 29 30...in editor, add this line: 31 32``` 33target_os = "chromeos" 34is_component_build = true 35is_debug = false 36``` 37 38Note: Only ```target_os = "chromeos"``` is required, the others are recommended 39for a good experience but you can configure Chrome however you like otherwise. 40Note that Native Client is required, so do not put `enable_nacl = false` in 41your file anywhere! 42 43Now build Chrome as usual, e.g.: 44 45``` 46autoninja -C out/cros chrome 47``` 48 49And run it as usual to see a mostly-complete Chrome OS desktop inside 50of a window: 51 52``` 53out/cros/chrome 54``` 55 56By default you'll be logged in as the default user. If you want to 57simulate the login manager too, run it like this: 58 59``` 60out/cros/chrome --login-manager 61``` 62 63You can run any of the above under it’s own X session (avoiding any window 64manager key combo conflicts) by doing something like 65 66``` 67startx out/cros/chrome 68``` 69 70NOTE: if you decide to run Chrome OS under linux within a window manager, you 71are subject to its keybindings which will most certainly conflict with 72ChromeVox. The Search key (which gets mapped from LWIN/key code 91), usually 73gets assigned to numerous shortcut combinations. You can manually disable all 74such combinations, or run under X as described above. 75 76## Speech 77 78If you want speech, you just need to copy the speech synthesis data files to 79/usr/share like it would be on a Chrome OS device: 80 81``` 82gsutil ls gs://chromeos-localmirror/distfiles/espeak* 83``` 84 85Pick the latest version and 86 87``` 88gsutil cp gs://chromeos-localmirror/distfiles/espeak-ng-20180801.tar.gz /usr/share/chromeos-assets/speech_synthesis/espeak-ng/ 89tar xvf /usr/share/chromeos-assets/speech_synthesis/espeak-ng/espeak-ng-20180801.tar.gz 90rm /usr/share/chromeos-assets/speech_synthesis/espeak-ng/espeak-ng-20180801.tar.gz 91``` 92 93**Be sure to check permissions of /usr/share/chromeos-assets, some users report 94they need to chmod or chown too, it really depends on your system.** 95 96**Note that the default Google tts engine is now only available on an actual 97Chrome OS device. ** 98 99After you do that, just run "chrome" as above (e.g. out/cros/chrome) and press 100Ctrl+Alt+Z, and you should hear it speak! If not, check the logs. 101 102## Braille 103 104ChromeVox uses extension APIs to deliver braille to Brltty through libbrlapi 105and uses Liblouis to perform translation and backtranslation. 106 107Once built, Chrome and ChromeVox will use your machine’s running Brltty 108daemon to display braille if ChromeVox is running. Simply ensure you have a 109display connected before running Chrome and that Brltty is running. 110 111Note you may need to customize brltty.conf (typically found in /etc). 112In particular, the api-parameters Auth param may exclude the current user. 113You can turn this off by doing: 114api-parameters Auth=none 115 116Testing against the latest releases of Brltty (e.g. 5.4 at time of writing) is 117encouraged. 118 119For more general information, see [ChromeVox](chromevox.md) 120 121# Using ChromeVox 122 123ChromeVox keyboard shortcuts use Search. On Linux that's usually your Windows 124key. If some shortcuts don't work, you may need to remove Gnome keyboard 125shortcut bindings, or use "startx", as suggested above, or remap it. 126 127* Search+Space: Click 128* Search+Left/Right: navigate linearly 129* Search+Period: Open ChromeVox menus 130* Search+H: jump to next heading on page 131