speechd-el intro to list, bug report

[Milan Zamazal]

>>>>> "Th" == Tim hobbs <tim.thelion at gmail.com> writes:

    Th> 1.  when I go back over to my laptop and use it at the normal
    Th> speed speech-dispatcher crashes, the voice stops and M-x
    Th> speechd-speak fails to connect, and must be restarted (sudo
    Th> /etc/init.d/speech-disptcher restart) before speechd-speak will
    Th> work.

If you use Speech Dispatcher older than 0.6.4, please upgrade it to the
latest version in Debian.  If you already use Speech Dispatcher 0.6.4
and it still crashes then I guess you've got a dual core processor.
There is some strange bug in Speech Dispatcher and/or system libraries
it uses that resists any attempts to catch it.  Workaround is to set the
LogLevel configuration option in /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf to
`5' (just be cautious about growing size of log files in
/var/log/speech-dispatcher/).  If it doesn't help or if you don't use a
dual core processor and Speech Dispatcher still crashes, please let us
know.

    Th> 2.  I don't hear characters like ().,<>"' just a short blip of
    Th> silence.  I even tried changing the speakpunctuation settings
    Th> with both speech-dispatchers config and speechd-el's front-end
    Th> function to all.

Flite doesn't read this characters itself.  Perhaps they could be
translated to English texts in the Speech Dispatcher Flite output module
as Flite doesn't support languages other than English anyway.

BTW, I'd suggest using Festival instead of Flite.  It reads all the
characters, it provides sound icons and generally provides more features
and voices.  If you'd like to try it, install speech-dispatcher-festival
Debian package and read README.Debian for information how to make it
run.
    
    Th> 3. There doesn't seem to be any difference in speed between
    Th> commonly read text and text being read for the first time, so
    Th> when I'm in the shell I have to listen to."slash home slash
    Th> timothy slash" a million times at the same slow rate, yet the
    Th> output of ls is to fast for me to hear.

If the shell prompt is in a different Emacs face (it should be), you can
do the following: Define a special faster rate voice in the
speechd-voices variable and then assign the voice to the prompt face in
the speechd-face-voices variable.  See speechd-el manual for detailed
information.  Feel free to ask if anything is not clear.

    Th> 4.  When I use gmail, it says all the goobledygock in the url.

I'm sorry, I don't use gmail nor have any idea how it works, so I can't
help with this.

    Th> 5.  w3m seems to have the same problem as with emacspeak of
    Th> speeking the url of the link the point is over and not the name
    Th> of the link.  

Look at "Problems" section in the speechd-el manual for a solution.

    Th> 6.  isearch tells me the letter I pressed, then the isearch
    Th> line, then the lame of the buffer, then the line it has found.

I don't understand what you'd like to have different.  Could you
elaborate?
    
    Th> I know that was a rather long list, but I'm just trying to
    Th> report problems and make suggestions.  I really love your
    Th> product already.

Thank you and thank you for feedback!

Regards,

Milan Zamazal