Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

Sat May 11 14:41:10 EDT 2013

Thanks again, Al. You are encouraging me to give this a reasonable try.
unfortunately, I'm suspecting I might need to enable pulseaudio on my
system for this to work. I'm willing to do that, especially as I
understand the application pavucontrol might solve my pulseaudio
complaints, but I can't tear down my working system for the half-day
this might all take just now.

I will report back, though, when I do get around to trying this all.

Janina

Al Sten-Clanton writes:
> Hi, Janina.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I did it from the login screen; I seem to remember
> having no speech and counting myself lucky to hear Orca.  Sorry I'm
> not more certain, but I guess sixteen days is too long ago for me to
> remember some things. :-)
> 
> Al
> 
> On 05/10/2013 03:28 PM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> >Hi, Al:
> >
> >Glad to hear someone got this working! <grin> Though, I certainly agree
> >it's not good to have your password read outloud.
> >
> >I tried this just now, but got no joy. Do you do this from the Desktop,
> >once Orca is loaded and running? Or do you do this from the GDM login
> >screen itself? Just for grins, I tried both.
> >
> >Janina
> >
> >Albert Sten-Clanton writes:
> >>Janina, I'm using Fedora 18, and now have a talking login using these
> >>instructions from an e-mail last month on the Orca mailing list:
> >>
> >>The easiest way to enable screen reader on GDM login screen is to press
> >>ctrl+alt+tab once, then press right arrow key once, then press down arrow
> >>key four
> >>times and then press the enter key. This is with gnome 3.6 on arch linux.
> >>
> >>The problem with it is that Orca speaks my password, so it's good that I use
> >>headphones almost all the time.
> >>
> >>Hope this helps a bit on *one* thing, anyway.
> >>
> >>Al
> >>
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces at linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina
> >>Sajka
> >>Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 2:25 PM
> >>To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux.
> >>Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux
> >>
> >>I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The compatibility
> >>library you need is available on Fedora 18 as:
> >>
> >>compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686
> >>
> >>PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a second
> >>physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share the same
> >>alsa device.
> >>
> >>And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice.
> >>
> >>That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking login--don't
> >>get me started talking about that, though!
> >>
> >>Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to use
> >>recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively being
> >>updated these days
> >>
> >>Janina
> >>
> >>Kyle writes:
> >>>According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll:
> >>># As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API.
> >>>
> >>>As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not
> >>>only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires
> >>>ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either
> >>>lost or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it,
> >>>so it can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get
> >>>any of its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s
> >>>u r e, which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in
> >>>Python, and is also a rather common username on some non-blindness
> >>>related forums. It also crashes on a rather common OCR error when
> >>>recognizing the word Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns
> >>>out it is a very common OCR scanning error, especially when scanning
> >>>newspapers. I was especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives
> >>>from the late 1800's and early 1900's. There are also reports of
> >>>random crashes that cause Voxin and other speech synthesis engines
> >>>with the exact same codebase but different names to randomly kill the
> >>>screen reader, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because
> >>>the source code is not available or is lost. Worse still is the fact
> >>>that many companies are actually making a profit from licensing
> >>>something so outdated, broken and unstable, but I guess that's no
> >>>different from what Microsoft has been doing for years <smile>. It may
> >>>fall on deaf ears for some reason, but my recommendation is to avoid Voxin
> >>and all the other voices like it.
> >>>Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you
> >>>don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working,
> >>>and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's
> >>>also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All
> >>>these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally
> >>>makes my head hurt.
> >>>~Kyle
> >>>http://kyle.tk/
> >>>--
> >>>"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> >>>Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>Speakup mailing list
> >>>Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> >>>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>
> >>--
> >>
> >>Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> >>			sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net
> >>		Email:	janina at rednote.net
> >>
> >>Linux Foundation Fellow
> >>Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> >>
> >>The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> >>Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> >>	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Speakup mailing list
> >>Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> >>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>Speakup mailing list
> >>Speakup at linux-speakup.org
> >>http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> _______________________________________________
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-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
			sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net
		Email:	janina at rednote.net

Linux Foundation Fellow
Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/