Re: [orca-list] Another newby, with some questions

["JM & Angel" <crystallogic ca inter net>]

Hello,

Thanks for the replies. I did forget to mention that I was using the Gnome 
Speech driver. The machine is a 1.2GHZ P4, and the memory is some of that 
weird Rambus stuff that you can hardly get anymore. I believe the video card 
is an Nvidia GeForce2 and audio is provided by a Creative Labs Soundblast 
Live card.

As for when this seems to happen, so far I haven't been able to detect any 
kind of pattern, though I do notice the sluggish behaviour most often when 
in FIrefox, I suppose because I must arrow through the webpages and so I 
spend a lot of time waiting for Orca to start speaking. I haven't really had 
the patience to try a great many things yet, but I'm hoping to tonight. The 
random Orca freezes don't seem to have a pattern to them that I can see, 
either.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Willie Walker" <William Walker Sun COM>
To: "Farhan" <i am Farhan gmail com>
Cc: "JM & Angel" <crystallogic ca inter net>; <Orca-list gnome org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:33 AM
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Another newby, with some questions


> When I see things like 'refurbished machine' and 256MB of RAM, it makes
> me wonder if the hardware in use is perhaps part of the issue.  What are
> the specs of the hardware being used?
>
> Will
>
> On Tue, 2008-08-26 at 18:57 -0500, Farhan wrote:
> > Hello, I agree with everything you've said so far. espeak is alright, but 
> > I agree that orca is rather sluggish compared to a windows or mac osx 
> > machine.
> > I am also wonder how do people use orca everyday with this sluggishness?
> > I'm not bagging on the orca developers, because I think orca is a great 
> > project,  and it has made great strides in the accessibleness of LInux, I 
> > am or have been waiting for orca to be as responsive as Windows so I can 
> > finally switch and this is making me rather frustrated.
> > Is the responsiveness of orca do to the python code being used? I'm not a 
> > programmer so I have know clue about such things.
> > When using orca with speech-dispatcher and espeak, its just as slow as 
> > with using it with gnome-speech.
> > I wonder  if most people are using orca with braille and do not encounter 
> > all these  unresponsive problems.
> >
> > On 8/26/2008 at 18:53 JM & Angel said
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > I've been lurking on the list for a few weeks now, reading some of the
> > comments, questions and so on as I try and get going with Linux. I'm 
> > pretty
> > new to the operating system, having used it a little remotely from a 
> > shell
> > in the 90s and learning a lot of basic file manipulation stuff along with
> > the usual Internet programmes. I'm using Windows for most things now, and
> > have wanted to get a machine and run Linux on it for a long time, so I 
> > could
> > tinker and learn the OS; maybe even ditch Microsoft for the most part if 
> > I
> > find that Linux works well for me.
> >
> > A really helpful and knowledgeable person got me a nice refurbished 
> > machine
> > and installed Ubuntu 8.04 on it for me. She successfully got Orca running 
> > in
> > the Gnome desktop, but after playing around with it for a while I noticed
> > that the screenreader seemed very sluggish and unresponsive. I upgraded 
> > to
> > 512 MB of ram from 256, thinking this might improve things, and while the 
> > OS
> > runs quicker in general I still find Orca almost excruciating to use. One
> > odd and possibly related thing I've noticed is that even though I have 
> > both
> > key and word echo turned off, if I'm typing a document or even entering 
> > an
> > URL, Orca seems to be trying to keep up with my keystrokes. It never 
> > speaks
> > until I've typed several characters, at which point it spits out some
> > slightly garbled version of what I've typed so far. At first I thought it
> > was some weird software quirk, but I think, after typing a lot more and
> > being quite distracted by this, that it can't be normal behaviour.
> >
> > I'm using the Espeak synthesiser at the moment .. definitely far from 
> > wild
> > about it and I might be obtaining a Dectalk Express synth soon to make 
> > this
> > just a little bit more manageable. Another thing I noticed is that Orca
> > seems to "flake out" at seemingly random times without any justification. 
> > I
> > might be browsing a page in firefox, or even in the terminal, or my 
> > partner
> > might hit one of the mouse buttons to do something quickly, and orcca 
> > just
> > freezes. The process still runs, but there's simply no speech. In order 
> > to
> > get it working again I have to quit Orca and restart it (it will let me 
> > quit
> > and doesn't have to be killed).
> >
> > I know that this isn't much to go on really, but the sluggishness in
> > particular has kept me from really tinkering with my new box as much as 
> > I'd
> > like. I have a lot to learn and right now am reading about Linux on the
> > windows computer because it's so much faster and more responsive! I guess 
> > at
> > this point I am just wondering if anybody has any ideas or suggestions 
> > for
> > me. I've looked at the Orca FAQ, but I'm afraid I'm still at a loss. It
> > can't really be this slow for everyone can it?
> >
> > Regards,
> > JM
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Orca-list mailing list
> > Orca-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Orca-list mailing list
> > Orca-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca
>
>
>
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