Gentoo Archives: gentoo-accessibility

From: Whitley CTR Cecil H <WhitleyCH.ctr@××××××××××××××××.mil>
To: "'gentoo-accessibility@l.g.o'" <gentoo-accessibility@l.g.o>
Subject: RE: [gentoo-accessibility] speakup and software speech revisited
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:55:06
Message-Id: 6D3A09C6CAB0D311BA5000902760D022040F21CE@chpt0000se01.cherrypoint.usmc.mil
1 Hi Deedra,
2 I am far from expert, but I will give it a shot.
3
4 First, for speakup itself make sure that you have software speech compiled
5 in as a module. You will also need to create the /dev/softsynth character
6 device (I don't remember the major/minor node numbers offhand), will look
7 those up and forward. I presume you have alsa already loaded/configured, if
8 not do so. I then emerged flite (the only tts I got to work with
9 speechd-up). I then emerged speech-dispatcher and speechd-up. Speechd-up
10 at the time required an entry in package.keywords to emerge. I manually
11 edited a startup script for flite since it doesn't have one. I then did
12 rc-update add speech-dispatcher boot
13 rc-update add flite boot
14 rc-update add speechd-up default
15
16 Use a kernel command line which includes speakup_synth=sftsynth.
17
18 Making speech-dispatcher and flite start at boot loads them before
19 speechd-up which is the proper sequence, getting speechd-up before
20 speech-dispatcher results in much pulling of hair. On my system speech
21 starts around the time networking is being loaded. flite is/was the default
22 tts for speech-dispatcher and I personally didn't have any luck getting it
23 to use festival (which was loaded/configured and worked in gnome just fine).
24 However I didn't spend a lot of time on it either. I found a dectalk
25 express on ebay which i got and as soon as it arrived and worked I disabled
26 software speech, except for festival which is still present for gnopernicus
27 to use.
28
29 As a side note, for ease of troubleshooting I wrote a script that would flip
30 speakup back to the hw synth I had so if speech didn't come up I could just
31 log in and type hwsynth to get speech.
32 ------- cut here ------
33 #!/bin/bash
34 echo "synth_keyword" > /proc/speakup/synth_name
35 ----- cut here ----
36 Replace synth_keyword in the above with the appropriate speakup designation
37 for your hw synth.
38 **** important *****
39 Also check some of the commands above, some used _ instead of - in places,
40 and I don't remember if it was in the command names or the names of the log
41 files. The critical things are to create the character device, to start
42 speech-dispatcher *before* speechd-up and to start your tts with an init
43 script during boot.
44 Regards,
45 Cecil

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RE: [gentoo-accessibility] speakup and software speech revisited Jeremy Huddleston <eradicator@g.o>