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Re: [orca-list] update on the antergos problems

hi
Thanks for your help, as usual lol. You're a lot more patient than I would be in your spot. Obviously my memory is wrong or out of date. I could've sworn luke removed the alsa backend, but either he didn't or it was put back, and if you say it works with espeak ng then it does. As for the pulse issue, if it is a pulse issue, I'm so confused I'm not even sure what the problem is anymore lol. I'm not going to file a bug accusing speech dispatcher with this little evidence. All I really have is, pulse messes up, in some vague way I can't explain, and speech dispatcher stops speaking. I fiddle a bit, deleting it's settings and reinstalling, and it works, for a little while. That's not much better than a brand new linux user saying orca doesn't work and providing no further proof. I'll have to do better than that. I am pretty sure that at some point the alsa output module in the arch build of speech dispatcher wouldn't build, or wasn't being built by default. I probably took this to mean that it was gone. But that's out of date anyway since it's back and has obviously had some work done on it if it works now. The last time I tried using it, which was at least a couple of years ago, it had some serious problems, lots of segfaults. I am on the speech dispatcher mailing list though, and will move the discussion there since it's obviously not an orca bug. Don't be sorry about correcting my statements either. If everyone did what I just did, we'd have rumors floating around that the linux kernel devs had quit, or were fired when ms bought them out, and so on. You'd think I'd know better as long as I've been using linux. 

Thanks

Kendell clark



On 02/13/2018 02:10 PM, Didier Spaier wrote:

Hello,

[quoted lines from Kendell Clark]:

I’m sorry, I should’ve been clearer. I didn’t mean to accuse debian
guys of making a mistake, but rather that speech-dispatcher’s pulse
audio code itself needs reworking, and that the debian guys who are
maintaining speech dispatcher might want to, when they have time of
course, take a look.

Well, Samuel Thibault (in CC) is one of the current maintainers of the
Debian packagee for speech dispatcher and moreover the new upstream
maintainer of speech-dispatcher cf.: https://devel.freebsoft.org/speechd

However I assume that he would expect you to file a bug in:
https://github.com/brailcom/speechd/issues

But he would certainly need more precise information, as the issue could
as well be due to orca, pulse or a specific configuration setting.

[quoted lines from Kendell Clark]:

I don’t remember the details, but luke said several times that speech
dispatcher’s pulse audio code needed a lot of work, something about
speech dispatcher using a simple API and pulse audio having a … a … oh
what was it, more complex one but that speech dispatcher wasn’t using
it? Something like that.

These statements are too vague to be useful. The code of the pulseaudio
backend for the spd_audio library is in /src/audio/pulse.c and if
something need to be changed here someone has to state why. Anyway I
assume that if Luke had possible enhancements in mind he spoke about
them with Samuel before leaving the project.

[quoted lines from Kendell Clark]:

I can try alsa or even better, libao. I’m hesitant to use speech
dispatcher’s alsa backend because it’s even worse than it’s pulse
backend. Especially with espeak. It hangs nearly constantly, and
that’s with espeak, not espeak ng. I’m not even sure it would work
with espeak ng. Also, I believe luke ripped it out. The only supported
backends are now pulse or libao. I will try libao though.

I am sorry but I have to correct some of your statements.
First, the alsa backend works perfectly: I am using it right now with
espeak-ng.

I can also say with certainty that Luke didn't rip anything from the
source tree of speech-dispatcher as I can see these files in the
src/audio directory:
alsa.c
libao.c
nas.c
oss.c
pulse.c

And I see among the files in src/modules directory espeak.c and
espeak-ng.c (otherwise how could I use espeak-ng?)

Caveat: I am speaking about the upstream files, I didn't check how
Debian or Antergos packaged them, especially if they removed some
backends or modules. Anyway I don't see any issue with
speech-dispatcher proper.


[quoted lines from Kendell Clark]:

Again, I’m not absolutely certain speech dispatcher is at fault. I am
fairly certain, since when I lose speech, orca starts but doesn’t
speak, orca’s preferences open, progress bars beep, etc but there’s no
speech. Fiddling with pulse audio will restore speech, for a little
bit.

Could you tell which kind of fiddling exactly, please? Knowing that could
help investigate

[quoted lines from Kendell Clark]:

I really wish in times like this orca would rely on espeak ng directly
instead of going through speech dispatcher.

Well, I will let Joanie answer to such a request if she wants to ;)


[quoted lines from Kendell Clark]:

I understand the logic both for and against sd, but at least have a
backup so if problems like this come up you’re not left with no
speech. Just think what would happen if a new user were hit with this.
They’d probably conclude that Linux is buggy and doesn’t work well,
run back to what they were using and … well you get the idea. I’m not
trying to start a debate either, only pointing out that this isn’t a
problem a new user would be able to solve. I’m able to  limit the
damage it does, but I can’t fix it.

Again, I still don't know what the problem really is, and am still not
convinced that a change in speech dispatcher, let alone dropping it, is
necessary.

If you want to be sure that orca + speech-dispatcher + epseak-ng can
work, just try Slint. To do that, just type:
wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/slint/files/14.2.1/slint64-14.2.1.1.iso
More information in:
http://slint.fr/wiki/en/installation
See also:
http://slackware.uk/slint/x86_64/slint-14.2.1/doc/ACCESSIBILITY

Greetings

Didier Spaier
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