A few questions regarding Speakup

[Robert Cole]

Hello, Kirk, everyone.

As far as the Arch virtual machine goes, I get the following errors at 
startup concerning ALSA/PulseAudio after installing GNOME.

ALSA lib pulse.c:229:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: 
Connection refused

The garbled voice does not take place until I install GNOME under Arch. 
I know that PulseAudio will be installed with GNOME under Arch. I 
completely uninstalled GNOME and then simply installed the 
pulseaudio-alsa and pulseaudio packages, and the same problem occurred 
with the garbled voice at startup.

I am not sure what to do in this situation to find out how to resolve 
this issue. I wish that I had a testing machine to try things like this 
out as opposed to using virtual machines, but my only option right now 
is virtualization.

Are there any other Arch users here on-list who successfully have 
Speakup and GNOME/PulseAudio working together?

I am not a LInux guru (yet), but if you need me to provide any 
particular information which would help in solving the issue I am 
having, I should be able to get it for you.

Thanks for any help.

Take care.

On 12/28/2011 07:15 AM, Kirk Reiser wrote:
> 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
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> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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