Re: [orca-list] updating espeak

[Christopher Chaltain <chaltain gmail com>]

I would agree with Alex's recommendation. I don't find the delta between 
what gets updated in the distros and the eSpeak source code to be worth 
the trouble.

I do periodically get the eSpeak source code and recompile it, but this 
is to force it to use runtime mode where it uses PulseAudio if it's 
available and PortAudio otherwise. This eliminates some latency I see 
when running Emacspeak with eSpeak. Note that I use LD_LIBRARY_PATH to 
ensure that only Emacspeak's eSpeak server is using my recompiled eSpeak 
so Orca would not be effected if I break anything.

I'll go ahead and paste the notes I keep around for myself on what I do 
to get and recompile the Espeak source code. Note that I'm no expert and 
these are just my own personal notes. Use them at your own risk, but 
give me any feedback if you have it.

**** Recompiling eSpeak to Use PulseAudio

Unfortunately, the last syllable spoken is always truncated making it 
unusable.

I fixed this by downloading the source code for eSpeak and compiling it 
for runtime, which uses PulseAudio if it's running and PortAudio otherwise.

I went to http://espeak.sourceforge.net/download.html and downloaded the 
file espeak-1.46.02-source.zip.

I had to install the library development packages for PulseAudio and 
PortAudio.

$ sudo apt-get install libpulse-dev libportaudio-dev

Now after unpacking the source code for eSpeak, I went into the source 
directory, espeak-1.46.02-source/src, and I made the following changes 
to the Makefile:

#DATADIR=/usr/share/espeak-data
DATADIR=/home/chaltain/Tools/share/espeak-data

#PREFIX=/usr
PREFIX=/home/chaltain/Tools

# 'runtime' uses pulseaudio if it is running, else uses portaudio
AUDIO = runtime
#AUDIO = portaudio

Now I run the commands:

$ make all
$ make install

This creates new eSpeak libraries and binaries, using the runtime 
option, and places them in my ~/Tools directory.

Now to start Emacspeak with eSpeak and these new libraries, I run the 
commands:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/chaltain/Tools/lib
$ emacspeak -e

aNow Emacspeak comes up and I don't have the latency issues.

I ended up adding the following lines to /usr/bin/emacspeak:

# Use the eSpeak library I recompiled myself to use PulseAudio.
# This fixes a latency problem.
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/chaltain/Tools/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Now I just need to run $ emacspeak -e to have Emacspeak use eSpeak and 
the libraries I compiled from source to use PulseAudio.

Note that I exported the variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH instead of running the 
following command:

$ sudo ldconfig /home/chaltain/Tools/lib

so that I'd only run emacspeak with this new library and not making the 
change globally, so as not to impact Orca if I did something wrong.

When using ldconfig, note you can use

$ ldconfig -p | grep espeak

to see which eSpeak library is being used.



On 05/02/2013 10:30 AM, Alex Midence wrote:
> It shouldn't.  I've done this before once or twice.  I stopped because I
> couldn't notice any real difference in my day to day usage that justified
> the headache.  You have to download the source code, compile it either
> againste Pulse or Alsa depending on your distribution which means modifying
> the makefile, and then hope and pray that you don't lose speech or that
> stuff that used to work doesn't suddenly stop working so well.  Only reason
> I did it before was to compile Espeak against Pulse and include the Sonic
> libraries by Bill Cox which let you increase your speech output to insanely
> fast rates like 6 and 7 hundred wpm and still retain clarity.  This was
> supposed to make my Emacspeak experience better.  It was OK but I stopped
> messing with it once I ran a distro without Pulse to make a hash of things.
> Also, I only did it after having successfully installed and gotten Festival
> to run as a backup so Orca would have something to speak with.  My
> recommendation would be to not mess with it as you can really screw yourself
> over if something goes wrong.
>
> My two cents,
> Alex M
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Josh
> Kennedy
> Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 10:16 AM
> To: orca-list gnome org
> Subject: [orca-list] updating espeak
>
> Hi, will it break orca or my linux distro if I download the latest espeak
> and install it? I like having the latest version.
>
>
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> 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

--
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail