Getting Speakup working on a server Linux OS

Mon Nov 30 18:13:53 EST 2009

Hi all,

Thanks again for the responses here.  I did just compile speechd-up
from the 'latest' sources and that was fine.  Then things got
complicated when I realised my binary-only voices were compiled for
OSS and after playing with wrappers and modifying speech dispatcher
modules I had one of those 'this is too difficult to be practical'
moments.  I've got the working Lenny system using Espeak and espeakup
and enough people are saying they get used to the voice that I'll give
it a try.

Cheers,
Garry

On 11/28/09, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com> wrote:
> I am quite sure there is also a debian package for speechd-up in GRML.
> However like others I have to say I haven't used speechd-up for a very
> long time. Whenever I felt the need for using IBMTTS I just used the
> speakup connector (I think it now may be part of voxin but it certainly
> was on the ttsynth page.
>
> However I have found myself using IBMTTS less and less and just going
> with espeak and espeakup, it really isn't bad and saves all the stuff
> you have to do in just trying to keep IBMTTS working.
>
> Michael Whapples
> On -10/01/37 20:59, John G. Heim wrote:
>> 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
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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