[orca-list] Speech Dispatcher 0.7 Beta3 -- Please help with testing

[Hynek Hanke <hanke brailcom org>]

Dear all,

we have uploaded a second public beta version for the 0.7
release of Speech Dispatcher

The Beta 3 differs from Beta 1 in the following aspects:
 * Unix sockets are by default placed in ~/.speech-dispatcher/
   thus fixing a DoS security concern,libraries now respect
   the SPEECHD_SOCK environment variable
 * Speech Dispatcher now compiles on MacOS
 * Generic module fixed to respect new audio setting mechanism
 * Bugfixes

We would like to ask you to help us with testing and report
any issues so that we can fix them before the final release.

You can find the 0.7 Beta 3 version here:

http://www.freebsoft.org/pub/projects/speechd/speech-dispatcher-0.7-beta3.tar.gz

This release is based on the great work done in the unofficial
development branch managed by Luke Yelavich, but some parts
needed to be reworked before an official release to ensure a cleaner
design, conformance to standards and smoother interoperability with
the rest of the system; the new changes were also documented etc.

Most important improvements in the 0.7 version are:

* Speech Dispatcher uses UNIX style sockets as default means
 of communication, thus avoiding the necessity to choose a numeric
 port and greatly easying session integration. Inet sockets are however
 still supported for communication over network.

* Autospawn -- server is started automatically when a client requests it
  It can be forbidden in the appropriate server configuration file.

* Pulse Audio output reworked and fixed

* Dispatcher runs as user service (not system service) by default
  and doesn't require the previous presence of ~/.speech-dispatcher
  directory

* All logging is now managed centrally, not by separate options

* Graceful audio fallback (e.g. if Pulse is not working, use Alsa...)

* Various bugfixes and fine-tunnings

* Updated documentation

For more detailed description of the changes, please see the Git log:
     http://git.freebsoft.org/?p=speechd.git

The documentation can be found in the doc/ directory of the .tar.gz package.

With Best regards,
Hynek Hanke
Brailcom, o.p.s.