Re: [orca-list] Some distro which do not strictly depend on Pulseaudio

[Didier Spaier <didier slint fr>]

Hello Janusz,

I will answer each part of your message after having quoted it

On 17/10/2019 19:15, Mgr. Janusz Chmiel via orca-list wrote:

> Speech-dispatcher, speech-dispatcher-espeak driver and some parts of Espeak speech synthesizers are currently 
> causing issues while working with it for longer time on my two computers which I have currently at home.
> Mbrola and other speech engines including Festival and very probably modern Nuance voices which are BETA 
> stage version do not cause those electric sounds.
> The problem is 100 % caused by Pulseaudio and some complex C++ language relationships between various modules 
> including parts of Kernel, which are compiled when Pulseaudio sound server needs to be incorporated in to 
> every Linux distro.

I don't think so. the electric (others would say robotic) character is only due to the fact that some voices 
like those associated with espeak or espeak-ng ones are not human voices but fully synthesized ones,

This is not the case for other voices like pico, mbrola or RHVoice or others that record phonemes actually 
spoken by human being then assemble them to build words and sentences.

Neither PulseAudio nor Speech-dispatcher come into play wrt the quality of the voices. There are no C++ 
language relationships involved between various modules including parts of the kernel: only the speakup 
driver is part of the kernel (and as such written in C not C++, although the language doesn't matter at all 
for this issue) and the speech-dispatcher modules just transmit the text to be spoken to the synthesizers, 
which in turn use the voices they are linked to.

> Sure, there is very very little programmers, which have free time to help with Espeak so my only one solution 
> is to use some Linux distribution, which do not enforce Pulseaudio when working with Mate desktop environment.

The issue with espeak (now espeak-ng) is the voices in use, not the synthesizer by itself, so more 
programmers wouldn't help. The voices used with the espeak synthesizer can be enhanced using the provided 
Klatt variants, or (even better in my opinion) the mbrola voices.

And indeed other synthesizers and voices can be used, that provide better results.

> Latest Knoppix could support mate desktop environment and mainly Espeak and Speech-dispatcher The best, 
> because it do not enforce Pulseaudio installation even while installing mate-desktop.

Again, PulseAudio does not come into play wrt the quality of voices.

> Unfortunately, included consolekid daemon is incompatible with mate-session complex C language code, this app 
> needs to use modern Console app, no consolekid daemon.
> As A result, mate-session can be only run in very hack mode.
> xsession mate-session

No such incompatibility exists. Mate-session works perfectly if a  ConsoleKit daemon is not started, I just 
checked in Slint. In this case you obviously can't halt or reboot the system as regular user from Mate, but 
you can still type the relevant command as root, for instance in mate-terminal

> This is not good, because Elogint daemon creates empty window, which can be accidentally closed and in this 
> case, mate-session crash.
> If user will pay attention on this empty window, it is not dangerous. No memory leaks, no random crashes, 
> Gconf database is correctly closed when user logout from Mate which run by using Knoppix.emd)

I can't say a word about elogind, as Slint does not use that (no systemd).

> But I do not want to overload Mate desktop environment C language programmers.
> They are doing excellent and very complex programmers task on their free time and I do not assume, that 
> rewriting mate-session so it will support consolekid daemon will be trivial task. it would mean coding 
> Mate-session code at The bad times several years ago.

Again, there is nothing Mate programmers have to do, the Mate desktop works perfectly with as well and 
without ConsoleKit

> LXDE do not support all panels and I do not assume, that LXDE developers will have free time to add complex 
> code to their apps so it will be so perfectly accessible as Mate.

We ship LXDE in Slint as well as XFCE and others, but yes, to my knowledge Gnome put aside (which I do not 
use) Mate is the only desktop with panels fully accessible.

> Debian netinst enforces Pulseaudio as dependency too, Ubuntu mate also.
> If there is some experienced C or C++ programmer, could somebody look at The mate-session source code to 
> determine, how complex would be to recode it so it would be compatible with consolekid daemon?
> Why mate-session must cooperate with some console background process?
> Sure. I could install dummy xdriver but it would not solve my problem with code dependency on modern non 
> console kid daemon.

Again, PulseAudio is guilty of nothing about voice quality, and ConsoleKit shouldn't be an issue with Mate.

As an aside, in Slint, by default in /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf the AudioOutputMethod is set to 
libao by default and in turn libao's default_driver is set to alsa in /etc/libao.conf, but changing these 
settings won't change the voice's quality, I think.

> There is currently no better desktop based on GTk than Mate. If there was some issue, programmers of this 
> environment have recoded their desktop and it is now really The best accessible desktop. Including mate file 
> search tool.

As a conclusion, if something has to be done to enhance your experience with Mate, I suggest that you ask the 
maintainers of the distribution you use, rather than the developers of its components.
Best regards,

Didier