Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Ernst-Dieter Wedekind]

Hi listers,
I recently installed grml 1.1 on my harddisk but I couldn't get speakup to 
talk through softsynth. When I used the cdrom it talked through my Apollo 
Hardsynth as well as through my softsynth. I went through all the 
configuration files of speech-dispatcher, flite and espeak but I can't seem 
to find any difference between the Cdrom and the installation. Anyone any 
idea as to the reason? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Ernst

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Tony Baechler]

Ernst-Dieter Wedekind wrote:
> I recently installed grml 1.1 on my harddisk but I couldn't get 
> speakup to talk through softsynth. When I used the cdrom it talked 
> through my Apollo Hardsynth as well as through my softsynth. I went 
> through all the configuration files of speech-dispatcher, flite and 
> espeak but I can't seem to find any difference between the Cdrom and 
> the installation. Anyone any idea as to the reason? Any help would be 
> greatly appreciated.


Have you tried including "swspeak" on the boot command line as well as 
running it after the system boots?  Remember that software speech won't 
speak boot messages.  You have to run the swspeak command once you're 
logged in as is clearly documented in the cheat codes on grml.org and I 
think on the CD itself.

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Ernst-Dieter Wedekind]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony@baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 12:05 PM
Subject: Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth


> Ernst-Dieter Wedekind wrote:
>> I recently installed grml 1.1 on my harddisk but I couldn't get speakup 
>> to talk through softsynth. When I used the cdrom it talked through my 
>> Apollo Hardsynth as well as through my softsynth. I went through all the 
>> configuration files of speech-dispatcher, flite and espeak but I can't 
>> seem to find any difference between the Cdrom and the installation. 
>> Anyone any idea as to the reason? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
> Have you tried including "swspeak" on the boot command line as well as 
> running it after the system boots?
Yes, I got speakup talking from the cdrom but not from the hard disk 
installation! I used the same method both ways!
Anyone got another idea?
Ernst

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

I also installed grml 1.1rc1 on my hard disk. I had no problem with 
software speech either from the CD or the hard disk. I suppose there 
could be a bug but putting swspeak on your kernel command line in your 
boot loader and running the swspeak command after login should work. 
Perhaps the final 1.1 upgraded Speakup to a more current version from 
git in which case you would have to do some tinkering. Have you done 
this command?

echo sftsyn >/proc/speakup/synth_name

The 1.1rc1 that I used has a relatively old version from cvs and I 
honestly can no longer recommend grml. You could try my custom Debian 
kernel with Speakup built-in but I don't know if it works with software 
speech on grml or not as I only use hardware here. If the above doesn't 
help, it's probably a bug.

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Michael Prokop]

* Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:

> The 1.1rc1 that I used has a relatively old version from cvs and I 
> honestly can no longer recommend grml.

We (at grml) usually try to avoid kernel upgrades between release
candidates and stable versions to avoid possible regressions. At the
time of rc1 it was the most recent speakup version available to me.

Your "I honestly can no longer recommend grml" is a slap into my face.

-mika-

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[John covici]

I have found grml quite useful over the years, even a slightly older
version has saved a certain portion of my anatomy several times!

Are you going to use the git version of speakup and if so, I need to
know when I need to change from using the /proc to the /sys parameter
structure?

Thanks.

on Wednesday 05/28/2008 Michael Prokop(mika@grml.org) wrote
 > * Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:
 > 
 > > The 1.1rc1 that I used has a relatively old version from cvs and I 
 > > honestly can no longer recommend grml.
 > 
 > We (at grml) usually try to avoid kernel upgrades between release
 > candidates and stable versions to avoid possible regressions. At the
 > time of rc1 it was the most recent speakup version available to me.
 > 
 > Your "I honestly can no longer recommend grml" is a slap into my face.
 > 
 > -mika-
 > 
 > _______________________________________________
 > Speakup mailing list
 > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
 > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Tony Baechler]

Michael Prokop wrote:
> * Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> The 1.1rc1 that I used has a relatively old version from cvs and I 
>> honestly can no longer recommend grml.
>>     
>
> Your "I honestly can no longer recommend grml" is a slap into my face.
>   


Hi,

My no longer recommending grml has nothing to do with Speakup support.  
Actually what attracted me to grml was just that.  I really like Debian 
but I don't like no official support for Speakup in the kernel or 
installer.  My reason for not recommending grml is that it installs 
literally hundreds of packages that I didn't need and aren't necessary.  
The problem was that by the time I got to a login prompt, I was 
practically out of memory.  I couldn't do much because the computer 
would lock up.  Once I removed the many unnecessary daemons and got my 
system as close to a vanilla Debian system as possible, my problems went 
away.  Unfortunately that meant removing every trace of grml and all the 
custom packages.

While I'm here, I'll try to anticipate your response.  You're probably 
going to say that you can deselect groups of packages in the grml2hd 
installer.  that might be true, but said installer doesn't work well 
with Speakup at least as of 1.1rc1.  I know of another person who had 
the same trouble.  Both him and I needed sighted help to do the actual 
installation.  Basically the problem is that the arrows don't tell me 
what the cursor is actually on, even when highlight tracking is on in 
Speakup.  I'll hear, for example, that I'm installing to hda1 when in 
fact the cursor is on hda2.  I wouldn't have known this without sighted 
help.  By the time I got to the package selection, I was frustrated and 
just wanted to get something working.

I have two other small complaints.  One is that I don't see why Speakup 
can't be included in the small or medium versions.  I don't want or need 
RAID, USB, LVM, SCSI, etc support.  I don't need software running as 
daemons which will try to crack other network sites.  I don't need 
Apache, Postfix, or an ftp server.  I would rather install grml-small or 
grml-medium and install the other packages that I want from Debian.  I 
can see why you wouldn't include Speakup in grml-small since the point 
is to be as small as possible, but I don't see why you couldn't include 
it in grml-medium.

With all of that said, I'm sorry that you feel insulted.  I didn't know 
you are reading this list or I would have elaborated at the time.  I 
obviously haven't used the final 1.1 release so hopefully some of these 
things have been addressed already.  I can say that there are some 
things about grml that I really like a lot.  One is the concentration on 
text tools.  In fact, I ended up giving up on installing X and Gnome 
because it wouldn't work no matter what, especially with the grml-x 
script.  There are enough console tools included that I haven't really 
needed X and I figured I would wait until I have a machine with more 
memory.  For a live CD, it is very complete and replaces the old rescue 
floppies of the past.  Again, the big attraction to me is that I could 
have speech at boot with Speakup.  Until the package and installer 
issues are fixed, I can't recommend it though.  One thing that would be 
helpful is to list the memory requirements somewhere online or during 
the installation.  I wouldn't have installed it if I would have realized 
the memory issues.  Finally, I realize that there is little you can do 
about it, but your download server is very slow.  Perhaps there are 
mirroring services out there which would be better.

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Tony Baechler]

John covici wrote:
> Are you going to use the git version of speakup and if so, I need to
> know when I need to change from using the /proc to the /sys parameter
> structure?
>   


Hi,

For those who don't want to upgrade grml or who are running Debian 
unstable, I have built the 2.6.24 kernel package with Speakup from git 
which uses the /sys/module structure.  I have installed and tested it on 
grml 1.1rc1 and it works better than the included grml kernel.  If you 
want it, the url is below:

http://baechler.net.nyud.net/debian/

http://baechler.net/debian/ if the above doesn't work

Comments are appreciated as I'm trying to determine if I should continue 
building kernel packages or not.

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Michael Prokop]

* John covici <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:

> I have found grml quite useful over the years, even a slightly older
> version has saved a certain portion of my anatomy several times!

> Are you going to use the git version of speakup and if so, I need to
> know when I need to change from using the /proc to the /sys parameter
> structure?

I've to check what work has to be done to be able to integrate it in
packages of kernel 2.6.25/2.6.26. AFAICS there don't exist any
Debian packages to build speakup as external modules yet.

-mika-
-- 
 ,'"`.         http://michael-prokop.at/
(  grml.org -» Linux Live-CD for texttool-users and sysadmins
 `._,'         http://grml.org/

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Michael Prokop]

* Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:
> Michael Prokop wrote:
>> * Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:

>>> The 1.1rc1 that I used has a relatively old version from cvs and I 
>>> honestly can no longer recommend grml.

>> Your "I honestly can no longer recommend grml" is a slap into my face.

> My no longer recommending grml has nothing to do with Speakup support.  
> Actually what attracted me to grml was just that.  I really like Debian 
> but I don't like no official support for Speakup in the kernel or 
> installer.  My reason for not recommending grml is that it installs 
> literally hundreds of packages that I didn't need and aren't necessary.  
> The problem was that by the time I got to a login prompt, I was 
> practically out of memory.  I couldn't do much because the computer 
> would lock up.  Once I removed the many unnecessary daemons and got my 
> system as close to a vanilla Debian system as possible, my problems went 
> away.  Unfortunately that meant removing every trace of grml and all the 
> custom packages.

How much RAM do you have? By default nearly no daemons are running
on grml.

> While I'm here, I'll try to anticipate your response.  You're probably 
> going to say that you can deselect groups of packages in the grml2hd 
> installer.  that might be true, but said installer doesn't work well 
> with Speakup at least as of 1.1rc1.  I know of another person who had 
> the same trouble.  Both him and I needed sighted help to do the actual 
> installation.  Basically the problem is that the arrows don't tell me 
> what the cursor is actually on, even when highlight tracking is on in 
> Speakup.  I'll hear, for example, that I'm installing to hda1 when in 
> fact the cursor is on hda2.  I wouldn't have known this without sighted 
> help.  By the time I got to the package selection, I was frustrated and 
> just wanted to get something working.

Why didn't you even report that problem? What do you think why we
are releasing release candidate versions?

> I have two other small complaints.  One is that I don't see why Speakup 
> can't be included in the small or medium versions.  I don't want or need 
> RAID, USB, LVM, SCSI, etc support.  I don't need software running as 
> daemons which will try to crack other network sites.  I don't need 
> Apache, Postfix, or an ftp server.  I would rather install grml-small or 
> grml-medium and install the other packages that I want from Debian.  I 
> can see why you wouldn't include Speakup in grml-small since the point 
> is to be as small as possible, but I don't see why you couldn't include 
> it in grml-medium.

Well, why didn't you report your wish to the grml-team? The kernel
used on grml-medium provides speakup support already, what's missing
are the userspace tools.

> With all of that said, I'm sorry that you feel insulted.  I didn't know 
> you are reading this list or I would have elaborated at the time. I 
> obviously haven't used the final 1.1 release so hopefully some of these 
> things have been addressed already.  I can say that there are some 
> things about grml that I really like a lot.  One is the concentration on 
> text tools.  In fact, I ended up giving up on installing X and Gnome 
> because it wouldn't work no matter what, especially with the grml-x 
> script.  There are enough console tools included that I haven't really 
> needed X and I figured I would wait until I have a machine with more 
> memory.  For a live CD, it is very complete and replaces the old rescue 
> floppies of the past.  Again, the big attraction to me is that I could 
> have speech at boot with Speakup.  Until the package and installer 
> issues are fixed, I can't recommend it though.

"Because it doesn't work for me it won't work for anyone out there?"

And because *you* encountered a bug in a single version without
telling that to the developer you can't recommend a product in
general? Just consume and don't give something back? Cool...

> One thing that would be helpful is to list the memory requirements
> somewhere online or during the installation.  I wouldn't have
> installed it if I would have realized the memory issues.

http://grml.org/faq/#requirements - "at least 64MB of RAM (for
stable use with ramdisks for unionfs and udev and running X window
system we recommend at least 128MB)"

http://grml.org/grml2hd/ - "You should have a partition with at
least 2.7 GB free space to use grml 1.1."

> Finally, I realize that there is little you can do about it, but
> your download server is very slow.  Perhaps there are mirroring
> services out there which would be better.

What server were/are you using for download and where are you from?

-mika-
-- 
 ,'"`.         http://michael-prokop.at/
(  grml.org -» Linux Live-CD for texttool-users and sysadmins
 `._,'         http://grml.org/

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[John covici]

You probably won't find 
Debian packages -- you will probably have to install from git and I
think now there is a way to compile outside the kernel tree, so it
should not be too bad.

on Saturday 05/31/2008 Michael Prokop(mika@grml.org) wrote
 > * John covici <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
 > 
 > > I have found grml quite useful over the years, even a slightly older
 > > version has saved a certain portion of my anatomy several times!
 > 
 > > Are you going to use the git version of speakup and if so, I need to
 > > know when I need to change from using the /proc to the /sys parameter
 > > structure?
 > 
 > I've to check what work has to be done to be able to integrate it in
 > packages of kernel 2.6.25/2.6.26. AFAICS there don't exist any
 > Debian packages to build speakup as external modules yet.
 > 
 > -mika-
 > -- 
 >  ,'"`.         http://michael-prokop.at/
 > (  grml.org -» Linux Live-CD for texttool-users and sysadmins
 >  `._,'         http://grml.org/
 > 
 > _______________________________________________
 > Speakup mailing list
 > Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
 > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Kirk Reiser]

Hi guys: Samuel will have to verify this but I believe there will be
Debian packages for speakup in the near future.

Michael as for what the speakup git repository will patch and install
against is all kernels from 2.6.18 up to the current Linux kernel git
repository version which changes hourly as far as I know.

I too would say I think you including and going out of your way to
make sure speakup is available and works on your CD
rescue/installation distribution is very well appreciated. I've use it
many times as a quick rescue path myself because it's just nice and
easy to grab your CD and drop it in a drive when I've managed to tie
the kernel in knots developing and debugging speakup.

   Kirk
--
Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Michael Prokop]

* John covici <covici@ccs.covici.com> wrote:

> You probably won't find 
> Debian packages -- you will probably have to install from git and I
> think now there is a way to compile outside the kernel tree, so it
> should not be too bad.

Yes, that's why I'd like to have a Debian package
(speakup-kernel-source) for compiling the speakup modules out-of-tree
against a selected kernel. The usual way of maintaining external
kernel modules in Debian.

-mika-
-- 
 ,'"`.         http://michael-prokop.at/
(  grml.org -» Linux Live-CD for texttool-users and sysadmins
 `._,'         http://grml.org/

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[Michael Prokop]

* Kirk Reiser <kirk@braille.uwo.ca> wrote:

> Hi guys: Samuel will have to verify this but I believe there will be
> Debian packages for speakup in the near future.

Great news!

> Michael as for what the speakup git repository will patch and install
> against is all kernels from 2.6.18 up to the current Linux kernel git
> repository version which changes hourly as far as I know.

Ok cool, thanks.

> I too would say I think you including and going out of your way to
> make sure speakup is available and works on your CD
> rescue/installation distribution is very well appreciated. I've use it
> many times as a quick rescue path myself because it's just nice and
> easy to grab your CD and drop it in a drive when I've managed to tie
> the kernel in knots developing and debugging speakup.

Thanks for your words. I'll check out whether it's possible to
provide speakup officially on grml-medium as well. Thanks for your
work and efforts.

-mika-
-- 
 ,'"`.         http://michael-prokop.at/
(  grml.org -» Linux Live-CD for texttool-users and sysadmins
 `._,'         http://grml.org/

Re: Speakup not talking on grml 1.1 softsynth

[tony seth]

Hi all, I'm waiting for the next release of grml... or at least a 
candidate, that supports the Asus thripple e pc, and since it is 
mentioned that it's coming, I'm waiting... besides that though, I 
really like grml, but I do have a question, can I install it as a duil 
boot ona sd card, the card is eight gig so size ins't a big deal, just 
wondering before I do it if it's possible.  Thanks much!
Cheereo!

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