[orca-list] gnome-speech seems to block orca

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello,
I will try and word this carefully so it doesn't get misunderstood.

I am using gnome-speech with IBMtts, and I have modified the bonobo
server file
(/usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_Speech_SynthesisDriver_Viavoice.server)
to use the Viavoice driver with ALSA's oss emulation.

When using orca, at times speech starts and it seems impossible to
interupt the speech. It appears as if the speech output is blocking
further execution in orca, until the speech finishes, or possibly when
it is reaching a join of speech strings sent to gnome-speech. An example
I can give is when I am cursoring through the list of emails in a folder
in evolution, orca starts speech of the item I move to, braille does not
change at this point, and no key presses seem to respond, until a good
way through the row of the list item being spoken, at which point
braille catches up and keys start responding. In fact when I say key
presses don't respond, I mean orca reports nothing as happening, it
continues what it is speaking as if nothing happened, but at the end the
key presses then all seem to happen.

I have never noticed this with orca and speech-dispatcher, but at the
moment gnome-speech seem better (a part from this problem) as there are
a couple of things with speech-dispatcher and the IBMtts module that
make it not so good.

Is this problem an orca bug or a gnome-speech bug? Does a bug report
already exist for this, or shall I create one.

Michael Whapples