Re: [orca-list] Patch: Experimental eSpeak support using python-espeak

[Peter Vágner <pvdeejay gmail com>]

Hello,
Thanks Chrys for the feetback.
Oh I should have reported I am working on this in the IRC channel so I 
would not waste your time.

In the mean time I have pushed all this into my github account at 
https://github.com/pvagner/orca fixing a few little things along the way:
- Proper range is now used when setting eSpeak volume.
- Voices with additional dialect such en-us pt-br can now be set correctly.

I am also seeing a bit of lag when pressing keys. It's mostly noticeable 
when typing too fast or selecting the text.
I haven't yet figured out what might be causing this. Perhaps I need to 
find a way on how to decrease eSpeak sound buffer somehow. Or I need to 
move speaking into seperate thread. If you have more ideas related to 
this, I'm listening.

Thanks and greetings

Peter

On 24.08.2015 at 07:35 chrys87 web de wrote:
> Howdy Peter,
>
> Haha i also did starting a work on this yesterday because storm_dragon told me that he is need this.  your 
> stuff works just fine! (i just did a quick test)
> So i stop my work on this and  do other things :).
>
> Cheers chrys
>
> Am Mo. Aug. 24 00:25:18 2015 GMT+0200 schrieb Peter Vágner:
> > Hello,
> > Today I was playing with orca a bit more than usual. The result is that
> > I have implemented an alternative speech server subclass. I have taken
> > speechdispatcherfactory module and I have replaced python-speechd API
> > with python-espeak one accross the whole module. So by doing this I
> > think I have created experimental direct eSpeak support for orca. It
> > requires python-espeak to be installed.
> > I tryed to do this because a while ago we were discussing this approach
> > here on the list. You guys were hoping for additional responsiveness
> > increase and easier way on how to add eSpeak specific features like
> > variants support into orca. Also I have come up with another little
> > advantage as I have been thinking about this more. By default eSpeak is
> > built with both pulseaudio and portaudio sound outputs. It first tryes
> > to use pulseaudio and if that is not available it plays its audio
> > through portaudio thus using alsa directly. It can't switch between this
> > dynamically at runtime but it at least works out what to use at
> > initialization what translates to when launching the application when
> > using python-espeak.
> > There are no eSpeak specific features yet. Things which are working
> > include speaking, changing voices, changing pitch, rate and volume. Say
> > all support with proper progress tracking is also working.
> > I am not sure I like this better than using eSpeak through
> > speech-dispatcher like we are doing for years. I am using this
> > experiment for just a few hours now. I am attaching a patch for those of
> > you who are not afraid of risking a bit. Please make sure you know how
> > to revert this and troubleshoot your system when it fails to speak. This
> > is my first attempt at trying to implement something into orca so it is
> > very likelly it may have loads of issues I even can't think of at the
> > moment.
> > So how to apply it if you really want to test it out.
> > - Install python-espeak. If you are on arch linux, get it from the AUR.
> > I guess on Debian or Ubuntu you can just do apt-get install
> > python-espeak. With other distributions I don't know whether there are
> > prebuilt packages. Python-espeak is hosted on launchpad and if there are
> > no packages for your distro then you can get it from there and install
> > using python setup tools.
> > To check whether the patch applies cleanly into your cloned orca git
> > tree you can run
> > git apply --check espeakfactory.patch
> > If there are no conflicts found you can then apply it by doing
> > git apply espeakfactory.patch
> > After doing this you can just build and install orca like normal.
> >
> > Greetings
> >
> > Peter