Speech-Dispatcher, Orca and MUlti-Channel Sounds!

[Hynek Hanke]

Hello,

Anthony, thanks for the guide. Luke, do you think it would
make sense to include this step-by-step guide into the Ubuntu Wiki?

> 1. Run 'sudo apt-get install speech-dispatcher python-speechd' in a terminal 
> 2. Once installed run 'spd-conf' in the same terminal.
> 3. Accept all of the default options except type 'pulse' for the sound server
> and '6560' for the synthesizer port.

I don't know if this doesn't bring unstability as the Pulse audio
backend in SD still suffered problems last time I checked (and it was
slow for some reasons in kernel configuration not just in Ubuntu,
but most other distributions). Maybe these problems are solved
already, which would be great.

> 4. Speech-dispatcher should then speak if everything is going to plan!
> 5. Use the 'speech-dispatcher -d' command to start up speech-dispatcher as a
> daemon'
> 6. Open the Orca preferences window and select speech-dispatcher as the
> speech synthesizer and click apply.

Alternatively run 'orca -t' to do the settings in text.

> 7. Orca should now be a lot more snappy and responsive.
> 8. Finally open the Session Manager from the preferences menu, create a new
> entry called speech-dispatcher and type 'speech-dispatcher -d' as the
> command, then reboot and enjoy you new snappier speech!

This used to not ensure that pulse audio gets started before
speech-dispatcher (which was necessary), but now that pulse
is also started on-demand, maybe this is not a problem anymore.

> 9. If you want to use espeak with YASR, you can then edit the
> /etc/yasr/yasr.conf file by commenting out the default Eflite synthesizer and
> uncomment the speech-dispatcher  and corresponding synthesizer port entries.

It should be mentioned however that this only affects YASR in terminals
under the X session, not in text console.

Have a nice day,
Hynek