Re: [orca-list] No speech with Ubuntu Gutsy beta 7.10

[Tomas Cerha <cerha brailcom org>]

Luke Yelavich wrote:
> Speech-dispatcher is in the universe part of the repository, and at 
> this late stage, it is not possible to move speech-dispatcher from universe to main.

Are there any technical reasons for this?

> There is also the issue of speech-dispatcher not easily having a system that allows individual 
> users to have speech-dispatcher configurations, so far as I know. This is not at all useful in 
> multi-user environments, which Ubuntu has to support.

Which particular situation in a multi-user environment is not covered by
the current design?  Without going into much detail, I'll try to outline
the basic philosophy behind the current design.  As far as we know, it
covers all the needs.  If you discovered any problems, we would
definitely like to know.

Speech Dispatcher is designed as a system service.  Its configuration
basically consists of three parts:

 - debugging options,
 - output modules,
 - default values.

Debugging options should not be modified by individual users.  Output
modules depend on the installed software and hardware, so their
configuration is system-wide by nature.  Default values may be
overridden by the client, so they are fully customizable by the user.

Orca is a typical example of a client, which sets the preferred
output-module, voice, pitch etc when it starts the connection to Speech
Dispatcher.  All theses settings are defined by the user in his/her Orca
preferences.  The same mechanism is implemented by Speechd-el and other
clients.

Said all that, it is also possible to run SD as a user (with user
defined configuration).  This allows further flexibility, but I don't
think this technique would be necessary to support multi-user environments.

We believe the current model is well balanced and covers most scenarios,
but we are open to any suggestions.

Best regards,

Tomas Cerha