how to tell which synthesizer is active

how to tell which synthesizer is active

[covici]

Hi.  In the old days, even if I had a synthesizer built in the kernel, I
could check and if speakup had deactivated because the synth was not
connected, the name would be changed to none.  I would like to be able
to do this now because I want to automatically switch to a software
synth if my hardware one is not connected.  However, the name of the
synth remains tthe same making it more difficult to do this.

Any ideas on this would be appreciated.

-- 
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: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

You could grep the output of dmesg.  Speakup always writes messages when 
a synth has timed out.  Perhaps something like this would work:

dmesg | tail | grep -i deactivated

You could run a cron job every 30 minutes or so which could check and 
switch to software speech.  By using tail, it only shows the most recent 
messages so you shouldn't get old results once you've switched.  You 
could also have your script check if software speech is already being 
used and just abort if it is.

On 9/6/2009 9:56 PM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> Hi.  In the old days, even if I had a synthesizer built in the kernel, I
> could check and if speakup had deactivated because the synth was not
> connected, the name would be changed to none.  I would like to be able
> to do this now because I want to automatically switch to a software
> synth if my hardware one is not connected.  However, the name of the
> synth remains tthe same making it more difficult to do this.
>    

How to Tell Which Synthesizer is Active?

[Hart Larry]

Well, Tony, I wonder if there are messages generated each time my DecTalk USB 
rate-and-pitch drop mysteriously?  If there are, then maybe the couple of 
experts in DecTalk may know of a fix?
I just took a look in /var/log/messages  but mostly found alsa items--and-even 
after a DecTalk slowdown, that file was not updated, but I still think it has 
to do with capitalization.
Thanks in advance for any suggestion.
Hart

Re: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[covici]

I want to do this only at boot time, but this sounds like it could have
a lot of false hits.  I still think the synth could be set to none when
this happens -- any reason why not?

Tony Baechler <tony@baechler.net> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> You could grep the output of dmesg.  Speakup always writes messages
> when a synth has timed out.  Perhaps something like this would work:
> 
> dmesg | tail | grep -i deactivated
> 
> You could run a cron job every 30 minutes or so which could check and
> switch to software speech.  By using tail, it only shows the most
> recent messages so you shouldn't get old results once you've switched.
> You could also have your script check if software speech is already
> being used and just abort if it is.
> 
> On 9/6/2009 9:56 PM, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> > Hi.  In the old days, even if I had a synthesizer built in the kernel, I
> > could check and if speakup had deactivated because the synth was not
> > connected, the name would be changed to none.  I would like to be able
> > to do this now because I want to automatically switch to a software
> > synth if my hardware one is not connected.  However, the name of the
> > synth remains tthe same making it more difficult to do this.
> >    
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[William Hubbs]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 12:36:20AM -0400, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> I want to do this only at boot time, but this sounds like it could have
> a lot of false hits.  I still think the synth could be set to none when
> this happens -- any reason why not?
 
 Hi John,

When we deactivate speakup because of too many timeouts, we don't
actually release the synthesizer.  What we do is similar to what happens
when print screen is pressed.

The code does not set the synth parameter to none in this case because
the synthesizer driver is still active in the system, it is just waiting
for you to press print screen before it starts sending data to the
synthesizer.

I could change the code so that it actually releases the synthesizer
when it deactivates, but, if I do that, you would have to use talkwith
or some other method to activate your synthesizer if speakup deactivates
because of timeouts, which is probably not what you want.

The other change I might be able to make would lead to the synth parameter being
none whenever the synth is deactivated or released including when print
screen is pressed.  What do you think?

William

Re: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[covici]

Well, what used to happen is that speakup actually probed and if the
synth was not there, then the synth was set to none, but now I guess it
does not do that anymore, but I agree that releasing the synth because
of timeouts may not be a good idea, but could there be a way to see if
the synth is there?

William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 12:36:20AM -0400, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> > I want to do this only at boot time, but this sounds like it could have
> > a lot of false hits.  I still think the synth could be set to none when
> > this happens -- any reason why not?
>  
>  Hi John,
> 
> When we deactivate speakup because of too many timeouts, we don't
> actually release the synthesizer.  What we do is similar to what happens
> when print screen is pressed.
> 
> The code does not set the synth parameter to none in this case because
> the synthesizer driver is still active in the system, it is just waiting
> for you to press print screen before it starts sending data to the
> synthesizer.
> 
> I could change the code so that it actually releases the synthesizer
> when it deactivates, but, if I do that, you would have to use talkwith
> or some other method to activate your synthesizer if speakup deactivates
> because of timeouts, which is probably not what you want.
> 
> The other change I might be able to make would lead to the synth parameter being
> none whenever the synth is deactivated or released including when print
> screen is pressed.  What do you think?
> 
> William
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[William Hubbs]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 12:14:34PM -0400, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote:
> Well, what used to happen is that speakup actually probed and if the
> synth was not there, then the synth was set to none, but now I guess it
> does not do that anymore, but I agree that releasing the synth because
> of timeouts may not be a good idea, but could there be a way to see if
> the synth is there?

We stopped probing because it was causing issues with some synthesizers
and other hardware as I remember, so I don't see us re-implementing
probing.

I might be able to set it to none if we time out, but the current design
would mean that it would also be set to none if you hit print screen to
turn off speakup, so I don't know if you want that either.

What do you think?

William

Re: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[John G. Heim]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Hubbs" <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com>
> I might be able to set it to none if we time out, but the current design
> would mean that it would also be set to none if you hit print screen to
> turn off speakup, so I don't know if you want that either.
>
> What do you think?
>

Well, I'm not too sure if I am following you completely but I think the new 
system allows you to get speech for logging in even if you forget to attach 
your synth before booting. In the past, if you forgot to attach your synth 
before you booted, you had to log in without speeach and start speech 
manually.

I understand why John C. wants to be able to tell which synth module is 
being used. If you could do that, then you could put the driver for the 
hardware synth in the initrd but if it wasn't attached, you could load the 
software speech module and use software speech. I used to have my laptop set 
up to do that. All it did was grep the output from lsmod for the driver for 
my hardware synth. If it didn't find it, it loaded the software speech 
driver and started speech-dispatcher.


Maybe there's something in lsmod that actually indicates which driver is 
active.

Re: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[William Hubbs]

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 01:26:23PM -0500, John G. Heim wrote:
> Well, I'm not too sure if I am following you completely but I think the new 
> system allows you to get speech for logging in even if you forget to attach 
> your synth before booting. In the past, if you forgot to attach your synth 
> before you booted, you had to log in without speeach and start speech 
> manually.
 
 In the past, we would open all of the serial ports and look for the
 synthesizer, so if we didn't find it on a port we didn't attempt to initialize
 it and we just left speakup in the system, but told it that there
 wasn't a synthesizer connected.  Now, we  skip this probing step and
 assume that the synthesizer is on port 1 unless you give a command line
 parameter telling us otherwise.

> I understand why John C. wants to be able to tell which synth module is 
> being used. If you could do that, then you could put the driver for the 
> hardware synth in the initrd but if it wasn't attached, you could load the 
> software speech module and use software speech. I used to have my laptop set 
> up to do that. All it did was grep the output from lsmod for the driver for 
> my hardware synth. If it didn't find it, it loaded the software speech 
> driver and started speech-dispatcher.
> 
> 
> Maybe there's something in lsmod that actually indicates which driver is 
> active.
 
I think John builds the hardware synth driver into the kernel and builds
the software synth driver as a module.  I think he is wanting to use the
synth sys file to tell when we have deactivated the hardware synth
because of too many time outs.

William

Re: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[Gregory Nowak]

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Hash: SHA1

How about a compromise? I propose leaving synth as is, and creating a
new file, /sys/accessibility/speakup/synth_active, which would be a
boolean. If the value is 1, the synth is active. If the value is 0,
the synth has timed out/prtscr was pressed to turn the synth off. This
way, synth can stay as is, and active could be checked in scripts, to
decide what action could be taken. So, for example, if synth is set to
bns, and active is set to 0, then you'd know that a hardware synth is
in use, but that it isn't attached. How does that sound, and could it
be implemented?

I too would like to do what John C wants to do. My solution is to have
the bns built in, so I can figure out what goes wrong before the
system is ready for me to login, and as a last step during boot up, I
switch to soft, regardless of if the bns is active or not. Soft is
always there, and if I need the bns, I can easily switch back to it
after login, but I agree that it would be nice to not have to do it
that way.

Greg


On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 11:46:30AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> We stopped probing because it was causing issues with some synthesizers
> and other hardware as I remember, so I don't see us re-implementing
> probing.
> 
> I might be able to set it to none if we time out, but the current design
> would mean that it would also be set to none if you hit print screen to
> turn off speakup, so I don't know if you want that either.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> William
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

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Re: How to Tell Which Synthesizer is Active?

[Tony Baechler]

Are you using the latest version of Speakup from git with the latest 
speakupconf?  I understand that the caps bug was fixed in the latest 
versions of both packages.  If you are using the latest versions of both 
Speakup and speakupconf and are still having problems, report this as a bug.

On 9/7/2009 8:00 PM, Hart Larry wrote:
> Well, Tony, I wonder if there are messages generated each time my 
> DecTalk USB rate-and-pitch drop mysteriously?  If there are, then 
> maybe the couple of experts in DecTalk may know of a fix?
>

Re: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[William Hubbs]

Hi Greg,

On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 12:42:18PM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> How about a compromise? I propose leaving synth as is, and creating a
> new file, /sys/accessibility/speakup/synth_active, which would be a
> boolean. If the value is 1, the synth is active. If the value is 0,
> the synth has timed out/prtscr was pressed to turn the synth off. This
> way, synth can stay as is, and active could be checked in scripts, to
> decide what action could be taken. So, for example, if synth is set to
> bns, and active is set to 0, then you'd know that a hardware synth is
> in use, but that it isn't attached. How does that sound, and could it
> be implemented?
 
 I can look into something like this.  How about putting it in the synth
 directory though, such as /sys/accessibility/speakup/bns/active?

William

Re: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[covici]

Sounds great to me -- as long as I could do something to test in a bash
script.

William Hubbs <w.d.hubbs@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Greg,
> 
> On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 12:42:18PM -0700, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > How about a compromise? I propose leaving synth as is, and creating a
> > new file, /sys/accessibility/speakup/synth_active, which would be a
> > boolean. If the value is 1, the synth is active. If the value is 0,
> > the synth has timed out/prtscr was pressed to turn the synth off. This
> > way, synth can stay as is, and active could be checked in scripts, to
> > decide what action could be taken. So, for example, if synth is set to
> > bns, and active is set to 0, then you'd know that a hardware synth is
> > in use, but that it isn't attached. How does that sound, and could it
> > be implemented?
>  
>  I can look into something like this.  How about putting it in the synth
>  directory though, such as /sys/accessibility/speakup/bns/active?
> 
> William
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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: how to tell which synthesizer is active

[Gregory Nowak]

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Hash: SHA1

William and all,

On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 12:29:19PM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
>  I can look into something like this.  How about putting it in the synth
>  directory though, such as /sys/accessibility/speakup/bns/active?

That would be fine by me.

Greg


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