Re: [orca-list] speech dispatcher - still confused

["Derek London" <derekedit hotmail com>]

And do I need to copy /etc/speech-dispatcher to my home directory, run 
spd-conf, both, or neither? In addition to the instructions listed, are 
there more directories that should have been or need to be created? It's 
looking for a clients directory. What should go in there? Also curious why 
/etc/init.d/speech-dispatcher stop doesn't stop the speech-dispatcher 
daemon, I see it says stopping, but then I still have to kill the process. 
All in all, I'm still largely unclear what I need to be doing, but the most 
important thing is getting orca to see speech-dispatcher when it is 
installed, or not see speech-dispatcher when it is removed so I can use the 
configuration dialog without crashing orca. I'm curious why running the same 
installation procedure the same way produces three distinctly different 
results: A. speech dispatcher works, with espeak. B. speech-dispatcher reads 
an error, using a "dummy module." C. nothing. As I said, I'm not really sure 
which set of directions I should be working from here, and since I'm 
creating more problems that I'm solving, I'll just ask on the list.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Hynek Hanke" <hanke brailcom org>
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 4:34 AM
To: "Derek London" <derekedit hotmail com>
Cc: <orca-list gnome org>
Subject: Re: [orca-list] speech dispatcher - still confused

> Dear Derek,
>
> one of the problems you face is that Speech Dispatcher
> is not well integrated into the distributions, so you need
> to do some installation and settings of things you should
> not normally be asked to do manually. There is definitely
> work waiting to be done to make these things easier.
>
>
> > I've been having trouble with port numbers changing between 6560 and 
> > 6561. What files is that variable set in?
> Speech Dispatcher is a server and Orca or other applications are clients.
> The port is a communication channel, so both the server and the client
> need to know on which port they can meet. In Speech Dispatcher you
> can set the port in the speechd.conf file. The default for system wide
> Speech Dispatcher is 6560 and user Speech Dispatcher is 6561. Depending
> on what Speech Dispatcher you want to run/use in the client you need
> to tell the client which port it should communicate with it. You can 
> either
> do it in the settings dialogs in the client (I don't know if it is 
> possible
> with Orca) or set the environment variable SPEECHD_PORT, which should
> be respected by all clients. One way to do this is to add the line
>
>     export SPEECHD_PORT=6561
>
> into your ~/.xsession file. This file needs to terminate with the line
>
>     gnome-session
>
> or similar.
>
> You need to restart your gnome-session then and can check what is
> the current state of the variable by executing in the terminal
>
> env | grep SPEECHD_PORT
> > Also, I know there are several different sound systems I can select from. 
> > Do I need to use alsa, oss, or pulse?
>
> You can use either of them, but ALSA is currently the most convenient 
> option.
>
> > Also it seems to be built around espeak
>
> No, espeak is the default option, but not in any way the only one.
>
> > as when I managed to get it to connect I heard my test message from 
> > espeak, nothing from ibmtts
> Either you have set espeak as the default or your ibmtts is not working.
> Check with
>
> spd-say -o ibmtts "Is this IBM TTS or espeak?"
>
> If you hear espeak not IBM TTS, your IBM TTS is not working with 
> Dispatcher.
> > , and an error message from a "dummy module" when I didn't uncomment the 
> > addmodule lines in the speechd.conf. As for orca, I've looked at 
> > debug.out and see where speech-dispatcher interface is not installed. 
> > apt-get install speech-dispatcher and apt-get install python-speechd were 
> > the two things I saw that I needed. Is there perhaps more?
>
> I don't think so. Very likely, Orca just didn't see Speech Dispatcher
> because you didn't set the SPEECHD_PORT environment variable.
>
> >  I'm curious if ibmtts is supported by speech dispatcher or if just the 
> > framework is in place and the support has yet to be written in.
> IBM TTS is supported and should work. There are some problems
> with it but they are difficult for us to fix given that IBM TTS is a
> proprietary not free software, it needs special old libraries, doesn't
> have a 64 bit binary etc.
>
> > I see things like "A command like spd-say hello in a terminal should 
> > cause espeak to say the word hello."
> I think this is a line from the manual for instalation procedure where
> it is meant that at the early stage, espeak is the default synthesizer,
> not that espeak is the only synthesizer to use with speechd once you
> have it up and running.
> > There, espeak is mentioned as if it should be the synthesizer that is 
> > used.
>
> No.
>
> > Will I need to do further editing to make it talk while other audio is 
> > being played?
>
> No, this should be the default behavior with ALSA (not OSS).
>
> With regards & hope it helps,
> Hynek Hanke