A few questions regarding Speakup

[Kirk Reiser]

Hi Robert: I can't answer all your questions because I only use gnome
on an occasional basis.  You can certainly use both speakup and gnome
at the same time and together.  Most folks that do that use speakup in
separate consoles which you can access with alt-control-fn keys, n
being any one of the number of consoles that are set-up by default on
your distributions.  I believe debian is six by default, I'm not sure
what it is on arch but Chris can say for sure.  We that use speakup a
lot typically use espeakup as our speakup interface which is a
connector program that ties espeak to speakup which is very responsive
and does work with alsa and maybe even pulse audio.  I'm not that
familiar with pulse audio however and turn it off more often than not
when applications that usually mix well by themselve trip over pulse
audio.

I'm not sure if that answers all your question but it might get a few
nay sayers to come out of the woodwork and add their two cents worth.

   Kirk

On Tue, 27 Dec 2011, Robert Cole wrote:

> Hello, everyone.
>
> My name is Robert (but you can call me Bob if you'd like). I am a partially 
> blind Linux user; I have no sight at all in my left eye, and I have very 
> limited vision in my right eye (an acuity measurement of 20/2000).
>
> I have been an Ubuntu user for nearly the past five years, however I am 
> thinking of switching to Arch Linux. I guess I would consider myself an 
> intermediate Linux user, but I have a lot more to learn. I have been trying 
> out TalkingArch [1] (a modified Arch CD which comes with Speakup in a live 
> session) in VirtualBox so that I can get a feel for Arch before I decide to 
> install it onto my desktop system. I have a few questions regarding Speakup, 
> and I hope that this is the best place for them (I do not know where else to 
> take these questions).
>
> I do not mind learning more about and using the command line, but my wife 
> absolutely must have a GUI environment. If I install GNOME, would I still be 
> able to use Speakup in a console window?
>
> I had Arch installed in VirtualBox earlier today, but when I installed GNOME 
> 3 the eSpeak voice sounded very garbled after a reboot. I am not sure what 
> caused this; I reinstalled Arch in VirtualBox earlier and have not installed 
> GNOME 3 yet.
>
> Now...this has been a bit confusing to me ever since my switch to Linux. I 
> have heard of different sound servers (?) such as ALSA, ESD (?), and 
> PulseAudio. Does Speakup work with PulseAudio or is ALSA required?
>
> I apologize for these questions; rest assured they are out of my ignorance. 
> :) I have depended on screen magnification for a very long time, but I want 
> to try to depend on it less, and so I am learning to use and work with screen 
> readers such as Orca in GNOME and now Speakup. Honestly, I just feel quite 
> lost. Regardless of that, though, I want to learn more about Linux, and Linux 
> is all that I prefer to use.
>
> I would really appreciate any advice and guidance.
>
> Thanks for any help which you may offer.
>
> I am looking forward to learning more!
>
> Take care.
>
> [1] Arch Linux for the Blind: 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_for_the_blind
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

--
Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061