Re: [orca-list] Need Help Getting my Speech Back

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

Well, I don't think it's folly to put Speakup on there as your screen
reader.  I just don't use speechdup.  I use espeakup and it works like a
lovely charm.  My current setup is:

OS:  Debian Wheezy
Console screen reader:  speakup w/ espeakup
Desktops: 
* gnome 3.4.2 w/ Orca through speech dispatcher
* Emacs through emacspeak
Speech synthesizer:  E-speak 
Sound output system:  Pure Alsa

If you'll notice, there's absolutely no two solutions that depend on the
same speech output servers with the exception of e-speak being the speech
synthesizer for all.  I've got gnome-speech with festival as a backup in
case speech dispatcher goes on the blink.  After that, all is just peachy.  

I like having Speakup for console speech because, quite frankly, I like the
way it handles the command line more than how Orca does.  I also use this
Linux box as a web server primarily so I don't always have the desktop
system up and running.  I've got one on there and do use it on rare
occasions but, mostly, speakup and emacspeak are what I run on it when I am
physically in front of it or SSH through PUTTY on a Windows machine.

Regards,
Alex M


Alex M


-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Ward [mailto:thomasward1978 gmail com] 
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2013 11:34 AM
To: Alex Midence
Cc: orca-list
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Need Help Getting my Speech Back

Hi Alex,

In deed I did have quite a time of it. Loosing all speech was a very
frustrating experience. Especially, since I was intending on setting up
Speakup as my backup screen reader for emergencies, and that turned out to
be folly.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I'll consider them. I was sort of
thinking of putting Emacspeak back on here anyway, because I've always liked
using Emacs for programming etc.

On 6/28/13, Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com> wrote:
> Hi, Thomas,
>
>   You must've had quite a time of it there.   I remember when I had a
> similar problem back on a 10.04 installation.  I resolved never ever 
> to find myself in a situation where I might lose my speech.  Here are 
> the steps I took in case you find them helpful:
>
> Overall philosophy:   Do *not* have speech dispatcher as your one and
> only speech server.  It breaks down, everything breaks down.
>
> 1.  Install gnome-speech.  I know it's deprecated but it's nice to 
> have in a pinch.
> 2.  Install Festival as a backup to e-speak and make it the default 
> choice for gnome-speech.  Again, not a good alternative to espeak as a 
> primary but it's great when the chips are down adn you lose e-speak 
> for some reason.
> 3.  Install Emacspeak and get it working either with flite or espeak.
> If you lose speech in console or x, you need a talking shell of some 
> kind.  Emacs has a mode that you can use for that.
> 4.  Install Yasr as a backup console screen reader.  (not sure how 
> workable that is these days.  I haven't gotten it to work since 
> Maverick.)
>
> Anyway, you build redundancies upon redundancies.   It may seem silly
> and a bit of overkill to you until you have it happen to you and the 
> prospect of reinstallation is too painful to bear.
>
> Glad to know you got her talking again.
> Best regards,
> Alex M
>
> On 06/27/2013 03:37 PM, Thomas Ward wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Please disregard this last post. I finally got Orca speaking again 
> > after removing the offending package, and resetting the default 
> > settings. Not sure what happened, but needless to say I am writing 
> > from my Linux system using Orca now. :D
> >
> > Cheers!
> >
> > On 6/27/13, Thomas Ward<thomasward1978 gmail com>  wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I am running a system with Ubuntu 12.04.2 and Orca 3.4.2, and I 
> > > think I must have done something to mess up my copy of Orca because 
> > > it no longer will speak to me. All I did was install the speechd-up 
> > > package, hoping to get Speakup working, restarted and now Orca is 
> > > dead as a hammer. it won't speak no matter what I do and neither will
Speakup.
> > > What can i do to get my speech back. I'm in a panic because that 
> > > drive has several GB of stuff on it and if I have to reinstall 
> > > Ubuntu from scratch not only am I going to be irate I'm going to 
> > > loose a lot of stuff for absolutely no reason. So can someone tell 
> > > me if there is a quick and easy fix for this problem?
> > >
> > > thanks.
> > _______________________________________________
> > orca-list mailing list
> > orca-list gnome org
> > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> > The manual is at
> > http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> > The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
> > Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
> > how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp