Speech dispatcher, speechd-up and DECtalk.

[Luke Yelavich]

On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 12:15:47AM EST, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, Luke:
> 
> I don't know about how to get this all into one script.
> 
> But, you have been successful where I haven't. Do you mind sharing your
> DEC Talk configuration? the file under /usr/local/etc?

Ok, here is a quick step by step procedure that I followed when setting up
DECtalk with speech-dispatcher and speakup. This assumes that you have your
sound card set up and working properly.

1. Install the DECtalk software and ensure it is functioning. If you are
installing DECtalk 5, there is a slight problem at the end of the install
script, so as root, run ldconfig. The say utility that comes with DECtalk is
the best way of testing it. Simply run Say, and type something. You should hear
DECtalk speak.
2. If you haven't already, get speech-dispatcher from whereever is best, or
check whether your distro has it packaged. I know Debian has it.
3. Find the speechd.conf file. If you built speech-dispatcher from source,
you are likely to find it in /usr/local/etc/speech-dispatcher, if you didn't
give the configuration any other options. If you installed a distro package,
then this will be found in /etc/speech-dispatcher.
4. Load up the configuration file in your favourite editor, and locate the
several lines that start with AddModule, which are all grouped together.
5. Add the following line under the others:
AddModule "dtk-generic"  "sd_generic"   "dtk-generic.conf"
6. Locate the line DefaultModule. It should have flite after it, as
speech-dispatcher needs flite to be built, and uses flite by default.
7. Remove the word flite, and put dtk-generic in it's place.
8. Now you will have to obtain speechd-up from the freebsoft CVS server, as
there are no tarball relesaes at this time. You must firstly install cvs before
this can be carried out. Just about all distros carry cvs, so grab it, and
install it.
9. Find somewhere to store the speechd-up, for example your home directory, and
type the following:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.freebsoft.org:/var/lib/cvs login
When asked for the password, just press enter. If this is the first time using
CVS, you will get an error message about .cvspass not existing in your home
directory, but this is fine. To get the source, type the following:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.freebsoft.org:/var/lib/cvs -z3 co speechd-up
You should notice a stream of filenames as the source code is downloaded. Once
this has finished, you will have a new directory, speechd-up.
10. To perform the next step, you will need to make sure you have both autoconf
and automake installed. Most distros have these, if not all of them, so go and
install it if they aren't on your system. You will also need gcc if you haven't
got it installed already.
11. Go into the speechd-up directory and type ./build.sh. This will create
the necessary files needed to actually build the source. You will know if this
has worked, as you should get the following message:
You can continue configuring and compiling speechd-up with
./configure && make all && make install
If this doesn't work however, it can depend on several things. Feel free to
email the speakup list if you want help.
12. Run ./configure, make, and then as root, make install. If this works, you
now have speechd-up on your system.
13. Load speech-dispatcher. This can be done simply by running
speech-dispatcher. YOu then need to either load and change, or change Speakup
to use the speakup_sftsyn driver. Once this is done, type speechd-up. If all
went well, you should hear DECtalk speaking to you.

Thisi is certainly not complete in terms of scenarios for configuration and
building etc, but it is basically what one has to do to get all this stuff
working. If people are interested, I may even write a HOWTO on how to do this,
with other info like changing the Speakup driver, etc.

> 
> Also, are you using speech-dispatcher-0.5?

I am using speech-dispatcher 0.4.1, although I can see 0.5 is in the rc stage,
which is a good thing I guess.

Luke