Installing speechd-el with word echo: here's how I managed it

[Milan Zamazal]

>>>>> "VT" == Veli-Pekka T?til? <vtatila at gmail.com> writes:

    VT> Since this was not exactly easy as a Linux newbie, I'm posting
    VT> some instructions on how to do this, in case someone might find
    VT> it in the archives later on.

Thank you for posting the instructions, it is a good way to guide other
users and letting maintainers to know what may be unclear.  I've
improved speechd-el README a bit.

    VT> 4. Next there was unpacking the tar.gz archive. I could normally
    VT> use the extract here context menu entry in Nautilus but I don't
    VT> know how to become root in Gnome, so that was no good. In stead,
    VT> I ended up extracting it in the root of my Emacs loadpath using
    VT> tar as documented here:

I think you will learn through time how many things are easier to do
from command line than from GNOME tools.  It is just necessary to know
how to access documentation.  Documentation for a particular command can
be displayed in terminal with

  man COMMAND

or (preferably) in Emacs using one of the commands

  M-x woman
  M-x man

I like `woman' more, but it can't display some man pages in which case
`man' helps.

Also, many basic utilities provide extensive documentation directly for
Emacs, try `C-h i' in Emacs.

    VT> 5. Of course it created a subdir which proved problematic. I
    VT> learned the hardway subdirs of the loadpath are not scanned,
    VT> just the root unless you tell otherwise. I don't know enough
    VT> Lisp linked list syntax to append to a list, which would be push
    VT> @path, 'something'; # for a Perl array.  

You can add a directory to your load path by putting

  (add-to-list 'load-path "/some/load/path/here")

to your ~/.emacs.
    
    VT> 6. Next, the rights were wrong. Since root is doing the file
    VT> copying, the *.el files are not by default readable by anyone
    VT> else. Again I don't know the groups I belong in as a user, since
    VT> I haven't found that info in Gnome. As many shell scripts, at
    VT> least Perl scripts do, do need the execute flag to work right, I
    VT> issued experimentally: chmod 755 *.el 

This is the right solution.

BTW, commands of your interest may be `groups' and `vigr'.  Also try
setting

  export EDITOR=emacs

in your shell startup files (typically ~/.bashrc).

Regards,

Milan Zamazal