RE: [gentoo-accessibility] speakup and software speech revisited

[Whitley CTR Cecil H <WhitleyCH.ctr@cherrypoint.usmc.mil>]

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Hi Deedra,
I am far from expert, but I will give it a shot.  

First, for speakup itself make sure that you have software speech compiled
in as a module.  You will also need to create the /dev/softsynth character
device (I don't remember the major/minor node numbers offhand), will look
those up and forward.  I presume you have alsa already loaded/configured, if
not do so.  I then emerged flite (the only tts I got to work with
speechd-up).  I then emerged speech-dispatcher and speechd-up.  Speechd-up
at the time required an entry in package.keywords to emerge.  I manually
edited a startup script for flite since it doesn't have one.  I then did
rc-update add speech-dispatcher boot
rc-update add flite boot
rc-update add speechd-up default

Use a kernel command line which includes speakup_synth=sftsynth.

Making speech-dispatcher and flite start at boot loads them before
speechd-up which is the proper sequence, getting speechd-up before
speech-dispatcher results in much pulling of hair.  On my system speech
starts around the time networking is being loaded.  flite is/was the default
tts for speech-dispatcher and I personally didn't have any luck getting it
to use festival (which was loaded/configured and worked in gnome just fine).
However I didn't spend a lot of time on it either.  I found a dectalk
express on ebay which i got and as soon as it arrived and worked I disabled
software speech, except for festival which is still present for gnopernicus
to use.  

As a side note, for ease of troubleshooting I wrote a script that would flip
speakup back to the hw synth I had so if speech didn't come up I could just
log in and type hwsynth to get speech.
------- cut here ------
#!/bin/bash
echo "synth_keyword" > /proc/speakup/synth_name
----- cut here ----
Replace synth_keyword in the above with the appropriate speakup designation
for your hw synth.  
**** important *****
Also check some of the commands above, some used _ instead of - in places,
and I don't remember if it was in the command names or the names of the log
files.  The critical things are to create the character device, to start
speech-dispatcher *before* speechd-up and to start your tts with an init
script during boot.  
Regards,
Cecil

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