Re: [orca-list] Orca and speech dispatcher

[Jacob Schmude <j schmude gmail com>]

Hi

On Mar 28, 2009, at 05:41, James & Nash wrote:

1. Where can I find and how do I install speech dispatcher?

Most distributions have it in their repositories, I know Debian, Ubuntu, and Gentoo all have a build for it. Otherwise, you may need to download and compile it, as I'm not sure what other distributions carry a package or build.

2. Why would someone use Speech Dispatcher and not GNOME Speech

One of the primary reasons for using speech dispatcher over gnome-speech, at least for me, is that it handles the audio output itself rather than relying on the synthesizer to do it. This means that the speech system always knows when the synthesizer is playing and further, means that the use of audio wrappers is unnecessary. Audio wrappers, such as aoss or padsp, have a tendency to make most gnome-speech drivers unstable to say the least, and may not even work for certain synthesizers depending on how they're compiled; Ubuntu 9.04's build of espeak is a prime example of this, you can't wrap it through pulseaudio with padsp even if you wanted to since portaudio was compiled to use ALSA now. With speech-dispatcher, you can use whichever audio output you'd like without worrying about what the synthesizer is compiled to use. With Linux audio being the jungle of different systems it is, it's best to have audio output handled in a single system such as speech dispatcher than rely on the synthesizer to do it.

3. Do those users using Speech Dispatcher use Pulse or Alsa?

I know I'm one of the oddballs here, but I use and really like Pulseaudio.