Hello,
If orca is installed and you hear no speech, perhaps your sound volume is muted or speech dispatcher is not working.
To test if you have working sound, you can run
speaker-test
from the terminal. To exit press ctrl+c .
Then to test if espeak is working simply run
espeak-ng hello
finally to check if speech-dispatcher is working run
spd-say hello
If everything is working except of speech dispatcher, perhaps you will have to reconfigure speech-dispatcher audio output to use specific backend.
By default it's configured to use pulseaudio.
If you wish to change it to alsa, open a file /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf in your prefered text editor, look for line
# AudioOutputMethod "pulse"
uncomment it by removing the # sign at the begining and change pulse to alsa like this...
AudioOutputMethod "alsa"
Greetings
Peter
Hi,I attempted the installation given by the developer and still did not have any luck. When Entering, “orca” on the command line in terminal after the first instructions. This first gave an error of, ”no speech”, but then upon a reboot everything seems to be installed, yet no speech. Correct version is showing as installed. I can get the preferences working too.There is just no speech output. Ideas? My sighted friend giving me assistance had to leave before being able to enter the commands to check the specific speech output, but this is the very first thing I will try when next starting up the virtual machine.I’m starting to think of alternatively trying NSpeakUp and eSpeak-NSG with the command line version of Whonix. Is there anything in particular that could be an issue there?
Can I manually check that each dependencyCan I manually check that each dependency is installed and just install it if it is not? I know that this is what the developerI know that this is what the developer was attempting,
Thank you,
-Reece
On Jan 1, 2021, at 9:38 AM, Peter Vágner <pvagner pvagner tk> wrote:
Hello,
By knowing that you need to plan help from sighted assistance very well, because you don't have such a help readily available, I think it would be better to install orca the way whonix developers are suggesting.
That's most easiest way on how to do it.
Backports is additional debian repository you can then add into your system and by following the instruction I have pointed to you can upgrade orca and its accessibility related dependencies to more up to date versions from there.
Greetings
Peter
Dňa 31. 12. 2020 o 20:41 Reece O'Bryan napísal(a):
What are the “backports” you are referring to? I’m not following what you are saying with that.
Still have not had someone to give me site assistance to try out your recommendations, but I am eagerly anticipating it and I will let you know the result of entering the commands to see if they produce sound. Should I follow instructions from the developer and then attempt to update orca to the latest version or will I be stuck with the older version for now?
Thank you so much,
-ReeceHello,
I think installing more up to date orca version from the backports does not conflict with the wiki instructions you have just linked to.
I assume whonix developers are trying to come up with a basic steps you need to perform in order to get orca running.
According to their comments there is an issue with orca debian package in debian buster where gstreamer dependency is not correctly installed along with orca so it has to be installed seperatelly as instructed.
However according to the bug report they have just filled yesterday as a result of their attempt at getting orca running I guess there are problems related to speech dispatcher configuration...
The issue is at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/orca/-/issues/176
If you can either follow their documentation or try to install orca from the buster backports.
Either way speech dispatcher logs should be examined at this point in order to make it work relyably I guess.
Greetings
Peter
Dňa 29. 12. 2020 o 23:29 Reece O'Bryan napísal(a):
I will be trying this later.
The creator of Whonix emailed me back and provided me with this link where he updated their wiki:
This seems like it will still be installing the old version of orca, correct?
Anyone have anything in particular I need to pass on to him as for what specifically needs to be done for the next release of Whonix with regard to orca?
Thank you,
-ReeceHello,
Yes, I am suggesting to paste that gst-launch command into a terminal and hitting enter.
A generated 440 HZ tone should start playing. To stop it press ctrl+c .
If you get that sound then gstreamer is working on your system and this is most likelly outdated orca package packaged in whonix.
On some distros the package is named gnome-orca on others it's just orca . Looking at debian buster gnome-orca is just transitional package which in turn installs orca.
Also further look to the debian's apt-cache reveals that debian buster includes orca 3.31.1 . And that's definatelly too old when it comes to this particular issue.
I understand that whonix suggests and installs packages from the debian stable branch.
Luckily and huge thanks to Samuel and other great people on the debian a11y team there is orca 3.38 in the buster backports.
And yeah, whonix has a paragraph on installing packages from debian backports on their wiki, so if you can, try following this little one: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Install_Software#Backports
Greetings
Peter
Dňa 29. 12. 2020 o 11:59 Reece O'Bryan napísal(a):
Just to clarify what you mean before attempting it, you mean to run those commands in the terminal and see if the output a sound? I am just clarifying that you are not talking about if I can output sound such as from a browser, etc.
I was thinking that it was a version issue when I couldn’t even check that. I will be attempting to get it to make sound in a few hours when I have cited assistance. With or without that working, would it be a temporary fix to install a different version of orca such as gnome?
Thank you,
-ReeceHello,
The issue is that it is not somehow possible to initialize gstreamer in your environment.
Some sanity checks have been added in orca 3.36.6 so if you are running that version or more up to date one, then this should be fixed for you.
Can you try if you can play some sounds with gst-launch?
gst-launch-1.0 audiotestsrc ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! pulsesink
Here is the related orca issue: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/orca/-/issues/161
Greetings
Peter
Dňa 29. 12. 2020 o 0:16 Reece O'Bryan via orca-list napísal(a):
Hi, Spoke with the developer of and he recommended to run the following: Dsudo apt update Dsudo apt install orca The download seemed to work, yet when trying to run or even running the command to check the version I received the following error, “AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_bus'” does anyone have an idea of how I can fix this? Do I need to try a different version of orca or what do you think the problem is? Thank you, -Reece _______________________________________________ orca-list mailing list orca-list gnome org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/ GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html<OpenPGP_0x144312F3EB650A2D.asc><OpenPGP_0x144312F3EB650A2D.asc><OpenPGP_0x144312F3EB650A2D.asc><OpenPGP_0x144312F3EB650A2D.asc>_______________________________________________
orca-list mailing list
orca-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
GNOME Universal Access guide: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html
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