Espeakup and Speech-Dispatcher-git--Fighting again?

[Chris Brannon]

Janina Sajka writes:
> The reason is that the current speech-dispatcher relase
> isn't correctly accepting an alsa card designation, i.e. it won't honor
> these two directives in speechd.conf:
>
>  AudioOutputMethod "libao"
>  AudioALSADevice "plughw:1"

Janina,
Unfortunately there's noway to specify an output device or even a driver
with Speech Dispatcher's libao backend.  It uses "default", whatever
that happens to be on your system.  You might be able to change the default
with the ALSA_CARD environment variable, but you'd have to disable all of
Speech Dispatcher's autospawn stuff and start it manually.
AudioALSADevice is just for the ALSA backend in Speech Dispatcher.

Your other option here would be to use libao's configuration file,
/etc/libao.conf or ~/.libao, to pass along the options you need.  I
think the options you want are default_driver and dev.
It's a bit of a blunt instrument because it sets defaults for everything
that uses libao.

I used to know my way around the Speech Dispatcher codebase very well.
I think it wouldn't be too hard to add the functionality you want to their
libao backend.  I'm willing to write the patch, but I won't make
any promises about when it'll be done.

If somebody else wants to take it on, just let me know, so there isn't
duplication of work.  I think it would be a good first project for somebody
who knows C and wants to "get their feet wet" with the Speech Dispatcher code.

-- Chris