Hi, Al: Yes, I should have been more clear. Pulseaudio is fully inactive on my systems. This means no pulseaudio whatsoever, not for any of my 5 audio devices. This includes my Orca over espeak, as well as my Speakup over TTSynth. As far as I can tell, the only penalty I've incurred is that I do NOT have earcons on the GUI desktop. Everything else works as it should. I am nevertheless investigating how to enable pulseaudio access to one or two specific cards. I'm perfectly happy to have it running, but only if I can restrict it at the card-level. Since I need to use jack for audio work, this is the only tenable approach, imo. Janina Albert Sten-Clanton writes: > Janina, thanks for the added info. Are you still able to avoid using > Pulseaudio? If so, does that mean avoiding it completely, or just with > Speakup? > > Al > > -----Original Message----- > From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces at linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of Janina > Sajka > Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 10:48 PM > To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. > Subject: Talking GDM [Was: Voxin was: Switching to Linux] > > All right! Now we're cooking with gas. > > Thanks, Al. It took a reboot, but GDM came up talking. > > So, my previous disappointment was just the missing piece of info that the > steps below don't work on the fly, but they will work for your next boot. > > Explaining the Steps: > > Ctrl-Alt-TAB Goes to the Two menu TABS up top. > > Right-Arrow once takes one to the Accessibility menu (Once more would be to > Power) > > Down four times is the Screenreader checkbox. > > Pressing RETURN checks the checkbox. > > 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 > > ctrl+alt+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 > > -- > > 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 -- 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/
