Questions about orca and speakup

Questions about orca and speakup

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
I have been trying to get orca, but with very little success, garnome didn't 
seem to want to compile everything successfully on my slackware machine (it 
seemed to fail when compiling HAL). Then when searching around about orca 
and other systems, I noticed that FreeBSD had it in ports, and being 
interested in what FreeBSD is liike (and also having a blank partition on my 
computer where a dead version of windows used to reside), I decided to try 
FreeBSD (requiring working through a serial console to get it setup). It 
seemed to be going OK, util network was to be connected to get internet 
access, where up on the kernel seems to have a problem and the machine gets 
restarted. Then hearing more good reports of Ubuntu from someone nearby, I 
decided to try that out, success finally, the CD booted and orca started 
speaking fine. Now orca, from what I can tell on the ubuntu CD will solve 
some of those difficulties of Linux that requires me to keep at least one 
computer with a copy of windows (mainly the browser not supported issues and 
javascript things).

Now for the actual questions. Would it be worth trying to persue installing 
gnome and orca in slackware, or would it be simpler to move over to ubuntu 
and having to move all configuration? Remember that both could co-exist for 
some time as I have that blank partition. Also if I was to move to ubuntu, 
is there a speakup package, or would it require a custom kernel? Also is 
there anything I should know about having both orca and speakup on a system, 
e.g. changing speakup to no synth before starting orca?

From
Michael Whapples

Re: Questions about orca and speakup

[Lorenzo Taylor]

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Having just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and found out that it is
definitely worth all the hype around it I would like to answer this one.

I personally recommend moving to Ubuntu.  It just works(TM) and the
Debian package management rocks.

As for Speakup, it's already in the Ubuntu Edgy kernel.  Just put the
module for your synthesizer in /etc/modules and you're good to go.  It's
a little more involved if you want software speech, but not as hard as
in other distros such as pure Debian.  The biggest problem you may fase
in Ubuntu is if you want Speakup to start right when the system starts
booting.  Then you will need to rebuild the kernel since Speakup is
built as modules.  Otherwise, if you like the modular approach, it's
extremely easy to get up and running, and putting the speakup modules in
your initrd may actually solve the problem of the late start without
having to rebuild the kernel.

HTH and HAND,
Lorenzo
- -- 
I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a curse.
- --Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment)
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Re: Questions about orca and speakup

[randy turner]

hi Michael

where can i download the iso of that cd
that you are talking about?
thanks in advance
randy

On Tue, 21 Nov 2006, Michael Whapples wrote:

> Hello,
> I have been trying to get orca, but with very little success, garnome didn't
> seem to want to compile everything successfully on my slackware machine (it
> seemed to fail when compiling HAL). Then when searching around about orca
> and other systems, I noticed that FreeBSD had it in ports, and being
> interested in what FreeBSD is liike (and also having a blank partition on my
> computer where a dead version of windows used to reside), I decided to try
> FreeBSD (requiring working through a serial console to get it setup). It
> seemed to be going OK, util network was to be connected to get internet
> access, where up on the kernel seems to have a problem and the machine gets
> restarted. Then hearing more good reports of Ubuntu from someone nearby, I
> decided to try that out, success finally, the CD booted and orca started
> speaking fine. Now orca, from what I can tell on the ubuntu CD will solve
> some of those difficulties of Linux that requires me to keep at least one
> computer with a copy of windows (mainly the browser not supported issues and
> javascript things).
>
> Now for the actual questions. Would it be worth trying to persue installing
> gnome and orca in slackware, or would it be simpler to move over to ubuntu
> and having to move all configuration? Remember that both could co-exist for
> some time as I have that blank partition. Also if I was to move to ubuntu,
> is there a speakup package, or would it require a custom kernel? Also is
> there anything I should know about having both orca and speakup on a system,
> e.g. changing speakup to no synth before starting orca?
>
> From
> Michael Whapples
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

RE: Questions about orca and speakup

[Scott Ford]

Hi,
	Could you tell me how I can start speakup, with the software synth,
in ubuntu?  If you could just point me to a site to figure it out, that
would be great also.  I would really like to be able to use speakup in a
terminal session.  Thankyou
Scott
 

-----Original Message-----
From: speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca [mailto:speakup-bounces@braille.uwo.ca]
On Behalf Of Lorenzo Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 12:50 PM
To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
Subject: Re: Questions about orca and speakup

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Having just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and found out that it is
definitely worth all the hype around it I would like to answer this one.

I personally recommend moving to Ubuntu.  It just works(TM) and the Debian
package management rocks.

As for Speakup, it's already in the Ubuntu Edgy kernel.  Just put the module
for your synthesizer in /etc/modules and you're good to go.  It's a little
more involved if you want software speech, but not as hard as in other
distros such as pure Debian.  The biggest problem you may fase in Ubuntu is
if you want Speakup to start right when the system starts booting.  Then you
will need to rebuild the kernel since Speakup is built as modules.
Otherwise, if you like the modular approach, it's extremely easy to get up
and running, and putting the speakup modules in your initrd may actually
solve the problem of the late start without having to rebuild the kernel.

HTH and HAND,
Lorenzo
- --
I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a curse.
- --Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment) -----BEGIN PGP
SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)

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=8ke1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Speakup mailing list
Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup


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Re: Questions about orca and speakup

[Lorenzo Taylor]

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Install speech-dispatcher, speechd-up & eSpeak.  Configure
Speech-Dispatcher to use eSpeak, unless you like the sound of Festival,
but you will probably still need to configure Speech-Dispatcher, since
when I installed it it failed to start.  Then just login to a terminal
and

sudo /etc/init.d/speech-dispatcher start
sudo modprobe speakup_sftsyn
sudo speechd-up

and you're good to go.  The next time you login to a terminal after
booting the system, you should only need to

sudo modprobe speakup_sftsyn
sudo speechd-up

and if you want speakup to start at boot time, just put speakup_sftsyn
at the end of /etc/modules and put speechd-up in your /etc/rc.local or
another startup script.  But remember that when you hear the login sound
you will need to kill speakup or it will try to work in your Gnome
session as well.

HTH,
Lorenzo
- -- 
I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a curse.
- --Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment)
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