[Grml] Accessibility stuff: was: Re: I got Espeakup finally to work

[Michael Whapples]

On 08/06/09 09:35, Hermann wrote:
> On 08.06.2009 10:12, Michael Whapples wrote:
> [...]
>
>> In most other cases (eg. you mention brltty)
>> there are alternatives (eg. brltty I thought can use espeak directly).
>
> No it can't. You have to use SD in order to use Espeak. So SD is 
> important for non-English speaking users.
>
I stand corrected, I just assumed as it supports, flite, festival, 
swift, viavoice, etc directly that espeak might be, no the docs don't 
mention espeak support.

>> I
>> would like to accept speech-dispatcher as the obvious choice for speech
>> output but unfortunately its problem with crashing from time to time (I
>> think it was you Hermann who said it has something to do with its ALSA
>> support) makes me personally want to back away from it.
>
> Yes, but unfortunately the SD team cannot find what causes this. It 
> does not appear on all machines, so it is difficault to figure out 
> what's going on.
> Moreover: It seems to be an Espeak problem, since other synts don't 
> crash at all or very seldom (for example Voxin).
>
I am sure I have had voxin crash on me when using speech-dispatcher. 
Anyway it seems like it will be a hard bug to track down.

>> Although I have
>> my personal feelings on speech-dispatcher I accept there are reasons to
>> use it so would say it should stay if possible.
>>
> I agree, but in addition I would prefere to have drivers for synths 
> that communicate directly with the apps, such as Espeakup.
> But perhaps that's what I'm familiar from Windows. Hardcore Linux 
> users seem to prefer server solutions.

I'm not saying don't have direct drivers like espeakup, particularly at 
the moment when speech-dispatcher still has some bugs which impact on 
useability. I just consider speech-dispatcher should be treated like 
SAPI is on windows. I thought that on windows when an application added 
speech output they tending to add SAPI support first before adding 
direct drivers for the synths.

I also have to say although server processes can be useful at times, I 
think there are times it seems to go too far on linux.

Michael Whapples

> Hermann