Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

Fri May 10 10:38:14 EDT 2013

I don't know all the extra debian packages voxxin  requires. It goes out 
and installs them itself. IIRC, /dev/dsp is created by installing the 
alsa-oss package. That may be one of the extra packages voxin requires. 
I don't know.  All I had to do to install voxim was unzip it and run the 
install script. When I restarted gdm, I went into orca preferences and 
was able to configure orca to use voxin for the TTS.

I've had some minor problems since switching to voxin like having the 
speech rate and the pitch get stuc at the wrong settings. Orca 
identifies links in mail messages and web pages by slowing the speech 
rate way down. And it identifies all caps by raising the pitch. 
Sometimes those settings don't go back where they belong. I also 
sometimes have to restart orca by pressing alt+f2 and typeing "orca 
--replace". But that almost always works if orca crashes or gets messed 
up somehow.

As I said, orca isn't anywhere near as stable as speakup. In fact, I'd 
rate it behind jaws, voiceover, and even nvda. But even so, it's darn 
good. Good enough for me to feel I can do my job with it approximately 
as efficiently as I could with Windows. I'm a linux systems admin and 
not using linux myself is kind of like cheating.  I'm finally using the 
same OS that all my end users are using.

On 05/09/13 14:37, Brandon McGinty-Carroll wrote:
> As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> Is this no longer correct?
>
> Brandon McGinty-Carroll
>
> On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 09:01:28AM -0500, John G. Heim wrote:
>> All I did was to do a talking install  the current debian stable.
>> Orca came up talking on the login screen when I rebooted after
>> finishing the install.
>>
>> Some recommendations:
>> 1. Go with debian stable.
>> 2. Consider doing a dist upgrade to stable backports. This gets you
>> a 3.2 kernel.
>> 3. Use firefox and thunderbird from mozilla on sourceforge. Do not
>> use the equivalent debian packages.
>> 4. Gedit is more than adequate as a replacement for notepad.
>> 5. Consider buying voxin. Voxin is eloquence for linux. You get the
>> same voice as jaws. It costs $6 from the oralux project. (Google
>> it.) Voxin may not be as stable as  espeak but I like the voice much
>> more.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 05/09/13 02:27, Tony Baechler wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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>>>
>>> What changes did you have to make to your daily routine when you made the
>>> switch?  I already use Firefox and Thunderbird here, but I'm still
>>> primarily on XP.  I use my Linux server daily, but I purposely haven't put
>>> X on it.  I have a small 10 GB installation of Debian unstable with X and
>>> experimental, but Orca fails to work, or at least I don't have speech when
>>> I try to start it.  Speakup, of course, works great.  I pretty much had
>>> the same bad experiences with Orca as other people and I didn't try to do
>>> anything fancy.  In fact, Vinux crashed almost constantly in Orca but not
>>> Speakup.  I had to use a Speakup console to kill my Orca session and
>>> reboot.  I read on the Debian accessibility list to enable experimental to
>>> bring in the latest Orca improvements, but it didn't seem to help.  If
>>> anything, it made things worse as I had a constant stream of broken
>>> packages.  Now that Wheezy is out, I'll try again one of these days
>>> soon-ish.  I'm not worried about moving my profiles over from Windows, but
>>> I'm more wondering about changes made from an accessibility point of view.
>>>   In other words, if someone with little to no Linux experience (not me,
>>> but someone else) wanted to make the full-time switch to Orca, how well
>>> could it be done and what adjustments would they have to make compared to
>>> doing things the Windows way?
>>>
>>> On 5/8/2013 10:57 AM, John G. Heim wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Huh, you're the second person in this thread to say that about orca.
>>>> But I just decided to switch to linux full time a few months ago and it
>>>> was pretty much a breeze.  I had been using that other operating system
>>>> too but almost all the end users I support use linux (all good
>>>> mathematicians do).  So I felt I was cheating by not using linux. But I
>>>> have had little to no trouble switching to linux with orca. I use
>>>> thunderbird & firefox constantly. It's not quite as good as
>>>> Windows/jaws but honestly, I made the transition fairly easily.
>>>>
>>>> I am really shocked to hear all these complaints about orca. Not to
>>>> doubt you. It's just   that it doesn't jibe with my experience at all.
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>>>
>>
>> --
>> ---
>> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu
>> _______________________________________________
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> _______________________________________________
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>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu