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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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. >>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >>>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32) >>>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ >>>> >>>> iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJRi0/LAAoJEPrAuJWnLe0y+yMP/RxUIuVbYrTv8cGcEo1aNMEj >>>> g2qstErfKEtEZKUapAryVr/QfVXdpVt10bPdynFqScKKKQfjMqTmP3CkoCVO02Ao >>>> BGhDnReuc4BI/DWuDnqJYayUusvjINnII47w4cjbfbLY+OEwmOajGlnvTLwIB6p5 >>>> +VVoCKdzIbTBrDk08lCSso24TToNfmVYUMBUDT8mBnRwGNjN182eDVPWy8PAvIUK >>>> QdkTOr1X1RMnn+6JsoHybRr3Owo55ILnL+XDQLEnUe1f5aGlrVXT9sdLPcCwa/uH >>>> Ff61apGsMOX20dZ2DiB4U8aiTuU0dV81eTywFt1UZmu8dGLsEGnhvHRCoNEl0JEN >>>> XwGH61/DdfpXnlBeusHG7quq2mTjPEy4dMpxaDoaVDVVVOf65TnVBcBBUupxZ44W >>>> ZEY/AgbJ5eOFwd8ZZouiVNIQt+BX7gRQ5wVjHwEXlx6d3kNVEsxKIVxhx24+gpXx >>>> Ro5Ci3fUoX/TCK3JjznxnkM7ZVPoom5B1s5ZEjEwfbVNBkOp7G6zOAeFO8N7EyRS >>>> V8upZXTkL+GWi2vT4bfyYz14yo1Vge22OoFXuPc5nftrjvKcKtzuw5QleYct3MYT >>>> UbMbZ0mmKSpVG58P7r6gQljOT0eWCq5z8wLXPzNmCcHAt8Tf9604upZClz7axGnT >>>> 0Kq+DEY+LDiEBVmqsdKs >>>> =Ghdw >>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Speakup mailing list >>>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org >>>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> --- >>> 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 >> _______________________________________________ >> Speakup mailing list >> Speakup at linux-speakup.org >> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup >> > > -- > --- > 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
