Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

Fri May 10 12:09:37 EDT 2013

I agree. I am extremely hearing impaired and I can only understand about 2 
out of 3 words when using espeak. When I heard that there was an 
eloquence-sounding voice available for linux, I jumped at it. I didn't 
quibble at the cost since having a nice, clear voice I could understand was 
more important to me than six bucks. It is a crying shame that nobody's 
doing anything with the via voice or eloquence anymore, but still hanging on 
to the source code greedily so that nobody can update it.

I use voxin with speech-dispatcher and speechd-up and i am able to work very 
well in my terminal with those tools. I avoid pulseAudio like the plague 
since from what I hear you can't have speech in console without jumping 
through weird hoops. I don't really see what the advantage of PulseAudio is 
anyway, except something about having per user audio settings or something 
like that. Since I'm the only user, I don't need that, and alsa works just 
fine.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John G. Heim" <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup at linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

>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-----
>>>> Hash: SHA256
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speakup mailing list
>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
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>>
>
> -- 
> ---
> John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup 