Re: [orca-list] Orca, gnome-speech and pulseaudio

[Jacob Schmude <j schmude gmail com>]

Hi Lorenzo
Check your /usr/bin/espeak-synthesis-driver, it should be a wrapper  
script envoking the driver through Pulseaudio if it's running. I'm not  
sure if the latest gnome-speech package bypasses pulse ornot, I use  
speech-dispatcher. If it's not, and it is the actual binary, move it  
to espeak-synthesis-driver.bin and create the following script:
#!/bin/bash
PATH="/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin"
if pidof pulseaudio >/dev/null && which padsp >/dev/null; then
  exec padsp $0.bin $@
else
  exec $0.bin $@
fi
Copy this to /usr/bin/espeak-synthesis-driver. This will wrap the  
driver in padsp, causing it to go through Pulseaudio again. This  
script will work with any other driver as well, just move the driver  
to its name with the extension .bin and symlink this script into place.

Alternatively, use speech dispatcher. This is what I'd actually  
recommend, especially with espeak, as their espeak driver is quite  
good and when used with pulse is much more stable than wrapping the  
gnome-speech driver via padsp. I wish gnome-speech had its own audio  
backends, this could take care of a lot of these stability problems  
with Pulseaudio.



On Feb 25, 2009, at 19:55, Lorenzo Taylor wrote:

> This message will probably be the reverse of other questions I have  
> seen on this list regarding pulseaudio.
>
> I am running Ubuntu Jaunty with all the latest updates as of the  
> posting of this message. For the last day or so, Orca using gnome- 
> speech is bypassing pulseaudio. This causes the speech to be  
> slightly more responsive, but at the expense of no longer being able  
> to listen to music or youtube videos while doing other things. In  
> fact, any sound produced by the system causes Orca to stop speaking  
> for about 6 or 7 seconds after the sound has stopped. Consequently,  
> I can't start playing a song or video while Orca is speaking, and I  
> can't do anything at all on the computer while a song or video is  
> playing. Is this a fairly new bug that should be reported or a still  
> somewhat buggy feature introduced by complaints regarding  
> responsiveness? Is there a way to get the gnome-speech espeak driver  
> to once again use pulseaudio for output so that I can have speech  
> while other sounds play? I can sacrifice a small bit of  
> responsiveness for the ability to play music while using the  
> computer to do other things.
>
> Thanks for any help,
> Lorenzo
> --
> Great Goddess Isis,
> Thou who art above the stars,
> Grant us peace and love.
> --Lorenzo Taylor
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