Re: Speech-dispatcher and the -generic modules for Dectalk and Swift voices
Hi, Following up on my own post as I solved my problems and wanted to share in case it's helpful to others. Firstly, never underestimate the power of user error. I'd screwed up a symlink to the Dectalk say executable so speech-dispatcher couldn't find it. The log files in /var/log/speech-dispatcher (one per module) are really really helpful. I also found that reducing the number of speech-dispatcher modules added to the absolute minimum needed helped. I was getting a broken pipe error when trying to use Cepstral but it seems to have been caused by a different module that I wasn't using. Uncommenting only the espeak, dectalk and cepstral modules meant I could get all working. The ALSA/OSS problem did arise so installing the aoss tool from the alsa-oss package was the answer. I changed the relevant module conf file to use that when calling the executable and again that worked out. I tried various sound output and for Dectalk at least I was getting minor clicks at the end of each utterance when using PulseAudio. For this synth I found the ALSA output with the aoss as described above worked best. Because the Swift module actually generates a wav file and then sends that to the sound system I find the swift module has too much lag for my tastes. Which is a shame as the Cepstral voices are superb. Hope that's useful to someone, Garry -- Garry Turkington garry.turking...@gmail.com On Wed, 3 Jun 2009, Garry Turkington wrote: Hi, After living with an old speakup 2.x install for an age I finally got around to building an up-to-date Ubuntu install. I've got Orca working with gnome-speech but also want speakup for terminal access. Since I want to use either Dectalk or Cepstral voices I've configured speech-dispatcher/speechd-up and can get it to work fine with espeak. But when I try to use the dtk-generic module I get no speech via spd-say. At first it appeared to be an Alsa/OSS thing as I think speech-dispatcher was locking /dev/dsp and the Dectalk libraries seem to want to talk to it directly via OSS. So I switched speech-dispatcher to use OSS and the conflict is gone in that while speech-dispatcher is configured with espeak I can successfully use the Dectalk command line say utility. But when I try and move to the dtk-generic module I get nothing. Plainly there's some incantation I'm missing here -- does anyone know it? I'll move onto Cepstral Swift after hopefully resolving this -- currently just loading the Swift module kills speech-dispatcher... Thanks, Garry -- Garry Turkington garry.turking...@gmail.com -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
A few more questions on Thunderbird
Thanks for the suggestions on Thunderbirdf, flat review mode, etc. I'll get on the Orca bug list and follow up with some of these issues. Anyway, I have a few more questions about Thunderbird: 1. 1. What is the best way to open and read a message in Thunderbird? I haven't been able to do this without performing a lot of tabbing. I'm used to just hitting enter on messages to read them, but that doesn't seem to work in Thunderbird with Orca. 2. I installed the Thunderbird beta manually into the /opt/thunderbird folder and created a shortcut on the start menu. Someone on the list suggested that I could add the line: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu jaunty main universe in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d file. I assume that this will add the beta packages to my list of available packages. The question is, if I now use this aptitude packager installer, where does the installed version of Thunderbird go and will it conflict with what I have installed in the /opt/thunderbird directory (or will it overwrite it)? Should I remove the version which I manually installed and configure Thunderbird again? Thanks for any clarifications. --Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Speech-dispatcher and the -generic modules for Dectalk and Swift voices
Hi, Thanks for the tip of commenting out all modules you're not actually using. I was having trouble getting speech-dispatcher to work at all with the swift module uncommented. In my case I also had to add the name of my voice to the swift-generic config file before it would work. I now have sd working through pulse with espeak, viavoice and swift. I have the output mode in sd set to oss then run speech-dispatcher with the padsp command. Thanks. Paul On 06/06/09 15:57, Garry Turkington wrote: Hi, Following up on my own post as I solved my problems and wanted to share in case it's helpful to others. Firstly, never underestimate the power of user error. I'd screwed up a symlink to the Dectalk say executable so speech-dispatcher couldn't find it. The log files in /var/log/speech-dispatcher (one per module) are really really helpful. I also found that reducing the number of speech-dispatcher modules added to the absolute minimum needed helped. I was getting a broken pipe error when trying to use Cepstral but it seems to have been caused by a different module that I wasn't using. Uncommenting only the espeak, dectalk and cepstral modules meant I could get all working. The ALSA/OSS problem did arise so installing the aoss tool from the alsa-oss package was the answer. I changed the relevant module conf file to use that when calling the executable and again that worked out. I tried various sound output and for Dectalk at least I was getting minor clicks at the end of each utterance when using PulseAudio. For this synth I found the ALSA output with the aoss as described above worked best. Because the Swift module actually generates a wav file and then sends that to the sound system I find the swift module has too much lag for my tastes. Which is a shame as the Cepstral voices are superb. Hope that's useful to someone, Garry -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: A few more questions on Thunderbird
Hi, That's a bit odd, you should be able to just hit enter on a message then read it with the arrow keys. Are you sure you have the latest version - the third beta? I'm not sure where thunderbird would install to if you use the package manager but I would guess it would install into /usr Paul On 06/06/09 15:59, Peter Torpey wrote: Thanks for the suggestions on Thunderbirdf, flat review mode, etc. I'll get on the Orca bug list and follow up with some of these issues. Anyway, I have a few more questions about Thunderbird: 1. 1. What is the best way to open and read a message in Thunderbird? I haven't been able to do this without performing a lot of tabbing. I'm used to just hitting enter on messages to read them, but that doesn't seem to work in Thunderbird with Orca. 2. I installed the Thunderbird beta manually into the /opt/thunderbird folder and created a shortcut on the start menu. Someone on the list suggested that I could add the line: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu jaunty main universe in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d file. I assume that this will add the beta packages to my list of available packages. The question is, if I now use this aptitude packager installer, where does the installed version of Thunderbird go and will it conflict with what I have installed in the /opt/thunderbird directory (or will it overwrite it)? Should I remove the version which I manually installed and configure Thunderbird again? Thanks for any clarifications. --Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: A few more questions on Thunderbird
Hi, On 06/06/09 15:59, Peter Torpey wrote: 1. 1. What is the best way to open and read a message in Thunderbird? I haven't been able to do this without performing a lot of tabbing. I'm used to just hitting enter on messages to read them, but that doesn't seem to work in Thunderbird with Orca. Perhaps this happens because you are reading the mails in original html? Take a look into the view menu - Message Body as.. Here plain text should be activated. 2. I installed the Thunderbird beta manually into the /opt/thunderbird folder and created a shortcut on the start menu. Someone on the list suggested that I could add the line: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu jaunty main universe in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d file. I assume that this will add the beta packages to my list of available packages. The question is, if I now use this aptitude packager installer, where does the installed version of Thunderbird go and will it conflict with what I have installed in the /opt/thunderbird directory (or will it overwrite it)? Should I remove the version which I manually installed and configure Thunderbird again? I had to add this line directly into my /etc/apt/sources.list to get this work.. After doing an apt-get update i had some more thunderbird packages available called for example thunderbird-3.0 or thunderbird-3.0-gnome-support. If one installs the tb3 package via aptitude it will overwrite his links for example /usr/bin/thunderbird .. but I think it woun't replace your /opt/thunderbird folder. This is also a problem as fahr as update manager is concerned: this app will also replace your linkss if updattes for tb are installed via it. I would suggest to use the tb and ff from the repo instead of installing manually to /opt/thunderbird. But this is just my opinion, because I repeadedly had to restore the links .. Regards Jann ___ Der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: Re: A few more questions on Thunderbird
Jan, Yes, I had the view set to read the mail in HTML format. Doesn't this work with tb? I thought that would make navigation easier and format more accurate. I'll try setting the view to plain text. If Tb doesn't work with HTML view, should that be noted on the Orca bug list? As I indicated, I could navigate to the message body and read it in the HTML view, but it certainly wasn't easy to get there. T Hanks. -- Pete From: Jann Schneider schneider_j...@yahoo.de Subject: Re: A few more questions on Thunderbird To: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com Message-ID: 4a2a9a9d.6030...@yahoo.de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi, On 06/06/09 15:59, Peter Torpey wrote: 1. 1. What is the best way to open and read a message in Thunderbird? I haven't been able to do this without performing a lot of tabbing. I'm used to just hitting enter on messages to read them, but that doesn't seem to work in Thunderbird with Orca. Perhaps this happens because you are reading the mails in original html? Take a look into the view menu - Message Body as.. Here plain text should be activated. -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: A few more questions on Thunderbird
Hi, I have the view set to html and it works fine for me. Paul On 06/06/09 18:57, Peter Torpey wrote: Jan, Yes, I had the view set to read the mail in HTML format. Doesn't this work with tb? I thought that would make navigation easier and format more accurate. I'll try setting the view to plain text. If Tb doesn't work with HTML view, should that be noted on the Orca bug list? As I indicated, I could navigate to the message body and read it in the HTML view, but it certainly wasn't easy to get there. T Hanks. -- Pete From: Jann Schneiderschneider_j...@yahoo.de Subject: Re: A few more questions on Thunderbird To: ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com Message-ID:4a2a9a9d.6030...@yahoo.de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hi, On 06/06/09 15:59, Peter Torpey wrote: 1. 1. What is the best way to open and read a message in Thunderbird? I haven't been able to do this without performing a lot of tabbing. I'm used to just hitting enter on messages to read them, but that doesn't seem to work in Thunderbird with Orca. Perhaps this happens because you are reading the mails in original html? Take a look into the view menu - Message Body as.. Here plain text should be activated. -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Thunderbird Problem Solved
I reported not being able to get into the message of a message by hitting enter or F6. I was going to try and change from HTML view to text view as suggested, but then I restarted Ubuntu. After restarting Ubuntu and loggin in agin, all seems to work this time. Thus, maybe this was a startup problem with the first install of tb. My first tests were after setting up and configuring tb, but I had never rebooted. Thanks everyone for their help. Everything is working nicely now. The only thing that I think is missing is the ability to use first-letter navigation in the tree view of folders. Currently one has to arrow down through the list to find the folder one wants to access. --Pete -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
Re: A few more questions on Thunderbird
Try pressing f7. This should turn on the browsing mode where you can arrow around in a message. You can also check it from the view menu. HTH, Lorenzo -- Nia diligenta kolegaro En laboro paca ne laciĝos, Ĝis la bela sonĝo de l' homaro Por eterna ben' efektiviĝos. --La Espero, himno de Esperanto -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
