Getting Speakup working on a server Linux OS

[John G. Heim]

There were 2 sources for speechd-up debian packages, ubuntu and myself.

I created a speechd-up debian package that mostly worked. But it  never 
became an official debian package and I don't think speechd-up is even being 
developed any more. You can try my packages but even I don't use them any 
more. I always use espeakup which does not require speech-dispatcher or 
speechd-up. If you ttry my packages, you will probably have to modify the 
/etc/init.d/speechd-up script. I think changes in debian from etch to lenny 
broke that script.

If you want to try my debian package you can point a browser here:
http://www.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/debian/binary-i386/speechd-up_0.5_i386.deb

Or for amd64:
http://www.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/debian/binary-amd64/speechd-up_0.5_amd64.deb
jheim at erdos:~/public/html$

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Garry Turkington" <garrys.lists at gmail.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2009 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: Getting Speakup working on a server Linux OS


> Hi Kelly/Tyler,
>
> Thanks for your responses.
>
> I do know that espeakup obviates the need for speech-dispatcher and
> speechd-up but since I want to try some commercial voices I'll have to
> use those as well.
>
> As Kelly suggested getting a vanilla Debian 5 install speech enabled
> using the aforementioned Speakup/Espeak/Espeakup was almost
> embarrassingly easy.  I've also found that the responsiveness I'm
> getting in the install within a VM is vastly improved on anything I
> ever saw before in a virtualized environment.  I know VMware
> explicitly did work on Linux sound in Workstation 7 but I'm sure
> congrats are owed to the Speakup folk too.  Nice one!
>
> Now that I've got a snapshot of this setup I'm now going to play with
> speech-dispatcher and speechd-up.  I see that there's a pre-rolled
> speech-dispatcher package in the Debian repo but not speechd-up.  I
> seem to recall mention of it though, is it in an additional repository
> somewhere?  I've not used Debian in anger for... err... 12 years ack
> so am somewhat out of touch on the repositories.
>
> Cheers,
> Garry
>
> On 11/26/09, Kelly Prescott <prescott at deltav.org> wrote:
>> Personally what I do is to use a centos distribution and hand-compile
>> a kernel to work.
>> then I exclude kernel* from updates.
>> I have also used gentoo and debian as well.
>> debian is probably the easiest for this kind of thing.
>> still, I like the tight rpm integration of cent5.
>> Just my $0.02
>>
>> =-- Kelly Prescott
>>
>>
>> On 11/25/09, Garry Turkington <garrys.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Apologies if a duplicate of this appears, I sent it Sunday but it's
>>> not hit my inbox or the archives.
>>>
>>> I've been using Speakup on a single Linux machine for years, using
>>> CentOS 4.x and a Dectalk Express.  This last means I've remained
>>> reasonably oblivious to the software speech machinery.
>>>
>>> In a recent international move however I've had a bunch of equipment
>>> die, including my main server and the aforementioned Dectalk among
>>> other items.  So this gives me the opportunity to do some
>>> rationalization.  Basically I want to Speakup-enable a Linux box which
>>> will have as a main part of its role to be a VMware Server host.
>>> Consequently I'm looking for a relatively stable OS, ideally one of
>>> the server variants out there.
>>>
>>> With only hardware synths to worry about this would be reasonably
>>> trivial as Speakup is my only dependency.  But if I need to use
>>> software speech -- and especially with my preference for some
>>> commercial voices -- I need get speech-dispatcher and speechd-up
>>> working.
>>>
>>> This is where the server variants get tricky as they tend not to have
>>> any of this stuff in the main repositories, or indeed many of the
>>> dependencies.  I just installed CentOS 5 in aVM to play with and it
>>> looked like this was going to turn into a major self-build activity.
>>> Ubuntu Server comes out of the box with no audio and I'm having a bear
>>> of a time getting that to work.
>>>
>>> So, anyone had success with either of the above or got other
>>> recommendations?  I've got Debian 5 installing as I type and am musing
>>> on just using that booted to runlevel 3 as an interim solution at
>>> least.  Basically I want a host OS where the upgrade cycle on
>>> dependent packages and kernels is relatively slow, with the server
>>> hosting many VMs extended uptime is important.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Garry
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
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>