Re: Emacspeak with eSpeak losing speech on Vinux 4

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

If I understand your setup and how our running emacs and emacspeak, I
don't think gnome-orca is the issue. 

>From your description, you appear to be running emacs and emacspeak in
Linux consoles and not under X. If that is the case, why run
gnome-orca? 

I run the gnome desktop. I have a key binding defined which will start
emacs as a native GTK app i.e. not inside a terminal or a linux console.
I have defined key bindings to move between virtual workspaces, where I
tend to run individual apps. For example, in one, I will start a gnome
terminal window with speech support from orca, in another emacs running
emacspeak using either espeak (work machine) or ibmtts (home machine).
In another virtual workspace, I have google-chrome running with
chromevox. I move between the virtual workspaces with f11 and f12. The
hardest part I had was getting the apps to default to opening maximised,
so that they use the whole virtual workspace and I don't get issues with
the mouse moving focus to the root window etc.

I rarely use the Linux console. I don't run speakup etc. 

For me, espeak under emacspeak is quite unstable. I turn off character
echo and that helps, but find that espeak either crashes or gets 'stuck'
repeating text or gets way behind a lot. I've just gotten use to the
fact that espeak under emacspeak is not particularly good. However,
espeak under speech-dispatcher and orca is rock solid for me, especially
on systems that are all 64 bit and not mixed 64 and 32 bit. At work, I
will often use speechd-el rather than emacspeak because it is much more
stable with espeak than emacspeak is. 

If you are starting X and speech-dispatcher and orca and then switching
to a Linux virtual console with ctl+alt+f[1..6], then it is possible you
will get instability as your really running two login sessions - one
under X and one just under the console. I would either not boot into X
and just run form the console (should be able to do that by changing the
default run-level) or I would continue to boot into X and run emacs and
emacspeak under X rather than switching to the console. It will take a
little extra work to get this working well if you have absolutely no
sight, but is quite possible.

Tim



On Fri, 2013-05-10 at 23:12 -0400, John Joseph Morgan wrote:
> Tim,
> Sorry, I may have misunderstood your message. The last thing I would recommend is to run as root.
> I was reporting something that I thought might lead to a better understanding of the problem.
> I recently moved to ubuntu 12.10 and started to have these problems. I'm pretty sure I wasn't experiencing these problems with ubuntu 10.04.
> Unless I misunderstood, you're having to restart espeak frequently, this doesn't seem to be a very stable situation.
> 
> Can you explain why we're seeing emacspeak and espeak crashing after  a couple of key strokes under a normal user and not seeing any kind of crashing under root?
> 
> I'm running ubuntu 12.10.
> emacspeak 37.0
> emacs 24.1.
> I open a new terminal login with control alt f[1-6], then invoke emacspeak.
> 
>   
> Actually, it's coming back to me now. I used to disable gnome by changing the run level for the login to 3 or something other than the level that brings up the guy. 
> emacspeak and speak was rock solid after that.
> I think gnome is messing things up.
> I used to be able to do this in /etc/inittab, but that doesn't seem to be there anymore.
> Thanks,
> John
> 
> On May 10, 2013, at 10:02 PM, Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Turn it around the other way - what do you do which you cannot do as a
> > normal user. Often, this just means having to make a few minor config
> > changes, such as adding your normal user to a specific group. For
> > example, on some systems, you may need to be a member of the audio group
> > i order to use the audio device. 
> > 
> > The difficulty here is that there are no set rules. It all depends on
> > your distro and how they have set things up. What is generally true is
> > that hardly anything other than software installation and low level
> > actions should require root privileges. Needing to run lots of htings as
> > root generally indicates a configuration problem. 
> > 
> > Tim
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, 2013-05-10 at 21:35 -0400, John Joseph Morgan wrote:
> >> How can I tell if a normal user has sufficient privileges?
> >> I used to do something under /dev/audio, but I can't remember what.
> >> Thanks,
> >> -j
> >> On May 10, 2013, at 8:00 PM, Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> 
> >>> 
> >>> I've never tried running as root with espeak or emacs, so can't comment
> >>> on differences. Very bad idea to run as root and should not be
> >>> necessary. Similar to always having your windows login running with
> >>> admin privs. You will expose yourself to malware and virus issues
> >>> (anyone who tells you Linux and OSX doesn't have malware or viruses is
> >>> talking rubbish). 
> >>> 
> >>> If you are seeing a difference between stability running as root
> >>> compared to a normal user, it might be that the normal user does not
> >>> have the necessary permissions to do things like use the real-time
> >>> scheduler which pulseaudio needs. However, I've not seen linux systems
> >>> having this problem for quite a few years now, so would be surprised. 
> >>> 
> >>> I run both gnome orca and emacspeak with espeak on one system, gnome
> >>> orca and emacspeak with outloud on another and emacspeak with just
> >>> espeak on a 3rd system. All are 64 bit. I've not noticed any significant
> >>> difference between the systems with respect to espeak. On all systems
> >>> using espeak, espeak is extremely stable with orca and speech dispatcher
> >>> and unstable with emacspeak. I also find espeak is very stable using
> >>> speechd-el. 
> >>> 
> >>> Tim
> >>> On Fri, 2013-05-10 at 19:17 -0400, John Joseph Morgan wrote:
> >>>> I see this too with espeak. It seems to go away when I run emacspeak with espeak under the root user.
> >>>> I have gnome started with orca at boot up. Is gnome and orca interfering somehow with a non-root user's use of espeak?
> >>>> John
> >>>> 
> >>>> On May 10, 2013, at 6:43 PM, Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>> 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> You can just use the dmesg command in a terminal. 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> I also see the regular loss of speech with espeak. I have never been
> >>>>> able to track down the issue, though I tend to get distracted with other
> >>>>> things when I try. I don't see this crashing with speechd or with espeak
> >>>>> and speech-dispatcher generally. It is limited to the emacspeak espeak
> >>>>> interface. 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> I find disabling character echo can help a bit. Otherwise, I've just
> >>>>> gotten use to hitting C-e C-s to restart espeak when it stops
> >>>>> responding. 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> I have noticed that I don't see this issue with the experiments I've
> >>>>> done that don't use tcl as the interface language. So it could be that
> >>>>> the problem is in the tcl layer, but this is just more guesswork.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> Tim
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> On Fri, 2013-05-10 at 11:50 +1000, Jason White wrote:
> >>>>>> Christopher Chaltain <chaltain@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> I don't see this file on this system. It's a Ubuntu based system.
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> Ubuntu keeps diverging from every other Linux distribution in a growing
> >>>>>> variety of ways.
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> Try /var/log/syslog. I don't have an Ubuntu-based system so I'm guessing here.
> >>>>>> 
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> >>>>>> 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> 
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> >>>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >> 
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> >> 
> > 
> > 
> 
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