[orca-list] linux sound issues Re: Opensolaris Vs. Ubuntu

[Halim Sahin <halim sahin t-online de>]

Hello,
The mentioned audio problem in linux does only ixist because no configuration
was made to reflect accessibility needs.

I think I have written this about 20 times in this list:

Opensound drivers were not free which was the reason for creating
alsa.
OSS had no softmixing features at this time!!!
Currently a user can play and enjoy his favourite song together with speech
output.
This needs complex configuration because no distribution does a usefull 
one at this point.

Currently the biggest problem is gnomespeech.
Orca uses as default gnomespeech to provide speech.
This is not a good solution because
1. It depends on gnome but we want to use the
textconsole as well
2. it doesn't handle soundoutput itself.
All synths must implement their own output methods
This is really bad for endusers.
They want use viavoice wich is (outdated).
It uses oss as default and BTW. does it run under opensolaris?
To use oss apps with orca we have two things.
1. use direct oss compat layer  output e. G. through /dev/dsp (wich is the bad
solution).

2. Use aoss wrapper wich is should be prefered because of softmixing!!!

The best solution for all problems is Speech-dispatcher.
It has native alsa output and works great for me on all my machines

my drivers are:
snd-hda-intel, snd-emu10k1, snd-intel8x0 snd-via17xxx, snd-usb-audio.
speech-dispatcher plays the speechoutput and doesn't relay on synthesis output stuff.

I am voting for 
1. using speech-dispatcher as default speech system under orca.
2. Distributions shouldn't try to route sound of speechsystems through soundservers like
pulseaudio!!!
Regards
Halim