Hi: Actually the software speech for speakup does not come with Fedora. You will have to configure and install a few things before you have it running. What comes with Fedora is Festival which is just a speech synthesizer. Festival is part of what you need, but it is not all of it. I am writing a document explaining how to do this, but it is taking forever. I am putting below a message I posted to someone else about this, so you can take a look at it. If you have questions, you can drop me a line directly. Here is the message: Hi there: I think you should use "flite", because it is written in C and it is faster and more responsive than "festival". However, if you like "festival" better, there is nothing wrong with that... To test the synths do: 1. $ flite -f /path/to/file 2. $ festival --tts /path/to/file Where /path/to/file is the path to some text file that you want flite/festival to speek. To get speakup working with software speech you will need some other applications. They are: 1. speech-dispatcher 2. speechd_up I think you can get speech-dispatcher from your apt-get repos. Speechd_up you will have to download from its website. I don't remember what that is. Someone else can tell you that or google it... Remember to look at the speech-dispatcher configuration if things are not working... To test speech-dispatcher do: $ speech-dispatcher $ spd-say "some text" Where "some text" is just some text you want it to speek. Now, you have to create the device /dev/softsynth with numbers 10/26. Use the command: $ mknod /dev/softsynth c 10 26 After you have done all of this, run speech-dispatcher: $ speech-dispatcher Load the "sftsyn" speakup module into memory: $ modprobe speakup_sftsyn and run speechd_up: $ speechd_up Note: you must remove the current speakup_xxxx module from the kernel before loading the speakup_sftsyn module. Do something like: $ rmmod speakup_xxxx Trying to load both modules at the same time, could crash your box. You should have a software speech enabled system at this point. I am writing a howto on how to do this, but it has taken me rediculously long to finish it! I guess life/baby/school/etc has gotten in the way. David B.
