serial synths and speakup

serial synths and speakup

[Keith Barrett]

Hi,

Noting the comments on the list regarding speakup and serial synths and 
the latest kernels, wonder if any one knows which kernel versions are 
affected.

I have just installed debian wheezy and as I could not get the software 
speech to work during the install, I used my apollo.

Interestingly, speakup came up without problem when I booted in to the 
new system.

Re: serial synths and speakup

[Doug Smith]

Fascinating.  I just installed Debian testing last night, and the software speech worked perfectly with the installer.  You just need to hit s and 
enter when the drive stops spinning and you are on your way.  Well, I was on this machine.  I need to get the v4l2 drivers installed here.  That 
should complete this system. 



Sincerely: 



Doug Smith

Re: serial synths and speakup

[Keith Barrett]

On 27/03/2012 15:51, Doug Smith wrote:
> Fascinating.  I just installed Debian testing last night, and the software speech worked perfectly with the installer.  You just need to hit s and
> enter when the drive stops spinning and you are on your way.  Well, I was on this machine.  I need to get the v4l2 drivers installed here.  That
> should complete this system.

That is interesting.  I did as you did and hit "s" and "enter" but never 
got speech.

However, when I looked in alsamixer after the install, the sound was 
muted, not sure why they do that.

Anyway, the surprise for me was the fact that speakup worked with the 
hardware speech.

>
>
>
> Sincerely:
>
>
>
> Doug Smith
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: serial synths and speakup

[Doug Smith]

That's funny.  On this testing installer, the amd64 netinst one, the sound works just fine.  By default, the master sound and all the rest of the 
controls worked fine.  



Strange stuff.  



Doug Smith

Re: serial synths and speakup

[Samuel Thibault]

Keith Barrett, le Tue 27 Mar 2012 17:13:37 +0100, a écrit :
> However, when I looked in alsamixer after the install, the sound was muted,
> not sure why they do that.

Because they don't do that, it's often the BIOS which does that.

Samuel

Re: serial synths and speakup

[John Heim]

I'm guessing you mean speakup worked with software speech after you finished 
the install.  I don't think speakup ever worked with serial synths since its 
been in the kernel. With squeeze, you could install a package of kernel 
modules. That package worked with serial synths.

I had to give up on wheezy because I couldn't get sound to work in gnome and 
therefore couldn't use orca.  But speakup worked fine with software speech 
and it worked with my hardware synth after I recompiled the kernel with my 
patch.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Keith Barrett" <lists@barrettpianos.co.uk>
To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 9:01 AM
Subject: serial synths and speakup


> Hi,
>
> Noting the comments on the list regarding speakup and serial synths and 
> the latest kernels, wonder if any one knows which kernel versions are 
> affected.
>
> I have just installed debian wheezy and as I could not get the software 
> speech to work during the install, I used my apollo.
>
> Interestingly, speakup came up without problem when I booted in to the new 
> system.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
> 

Re: serial synths and speakup

[Adam Myrow]

Speakup works OK with my Dectalk USB in serial mode in kernel 2.6.37.6. 
This is the stock kernel of Slackware 13.37.  It still has the 
long-standing bug of randomly changing the speech rate to very slow, 
randomly dropping the pitch instead of properly shifting it to uppercase, 
and changing the punctuation mode so that a few characters are spoken that 
aren't at startup.  I suspect most of this is due to the fact that the 
Dectalk USB isn't 100% compatible with the Dectalk Express despite the 
claims of the manufacturer.  I'm also running on a 32-bit system, and I've 
heard that this problem really started showing up with 64-bit systems.

Re: serial synths and speakup

[Keith Barrett]

On 27/03/2012 22:40, John Heim wrote:
> I'm guessing you mean speakup worked with software speech after you
> finished the install. I don't think speakup ever worked with serial
> synths since its been in the kernel. With squeeze, you could install a
> package of kernel modules. That package worked with serial synths.

No, that is not what I mean.  I am pleased to report that speakup is 
working fine with the apollo in debian wheezy.

  I was surprised to find this.  I have not attempted software speech 
although I am sure it will work now that I have unmuted the sound card 
but given the choice, I prefer the hardware speech.

I have not knowingly installed anything special to make it work but did 
use hardware speech throughout the wheezy install.

hth

>
> I had to give up on wheezy because I couldn't get sound to work in gnome
> and therefore couldn't use orca. But speakup worked fine with software
> speech and it worked with my hardware synth after I recompiled the
> kernel with my patch.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Barrett"
> <lists@barrettpianos.co.uk>
> To: <speakup@braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 9:01 AM
> Subject: serial synths and speakup
>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Noting the comments on the list regarding speakup and serial synths
>> and the latest kernels, wonder if any one knows which kernel versions
>> are affected.
>>
>> I have just installed debian wheezy and as I could not get the
>> software speech to work during the install, I used my apollo.
>>
>> Interestingly, speakup came up without problem when I booted in to the
>> new system.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: serial synths and speakup

[John G. Heim]

-----Original Message----- 
From: Keith Barrett
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 10:50 AM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: serial synths and speakup



On 27/03/2012 22:40, John Heim wrote:
> I'm guessing you mean speakup worked with software speech after you
> finished the install. I don't think speakup ever worked with serial
> synths since its been in the kernel. With squeeze, you could install a
> package of kernel modules. That package worked with serial synths.

No, that is not what I mean.  I am pleased to report that speakup is
working fine with the apollo in debian wheezy.


Oh, yes, I forgot about that. It is yet another complication. Some serial 
synths do not use the regular speakup code to talk to the serial port. I 
guess it depends on who wrote the driver.  Welllooking on the bright side, 
this means that just cutting out the code that was causing the problem for 
other synths should be okay since some synths were never using it in the 
first place.

serial synths and speakup

[Ryan Hutchings]

I can confirm that the current stable version of debian 6.0.3 (squeezy) also works with hardware serial synths.

Ryan