Re: Emacspeak with eSpeak losing speech on Vinux 4

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of the main reasons I use X and gnome is to have easy access to
google-chrome and chromevox, which I find to be the best web browser
with speech support out there. The use of gnome orca makes the gnome
experience bearable and the combination of emacs, emacspeak, google
chrome and chromevox gives me a pretty comprehensive environment. When I
absolutely have to, I can fall back to gnome-terminal, orca and gedit
(or even vi in a pinch). 

I fought against the GUI environment for years, but realised that the
web was becoming too 'rich' for a plain text editor that doens't support
javascript. While I still use w3m and even w3 from time to time, I use
chrome and chromevox more and more. in fact, one of my tasks for today
is to adjust my browse-url config to make switching between browsing
with w3m, w3 and chrome even easier. 

Tim

Tim


On Sat, 2013-05-11 at 15:08 -0400, John Joseph Morgan wrote:
> I'll read this closer later, but I agree in general.
> I really don't like GUI's.
> I don't have mail and a browser working with emacspeak, but if ( and when ) I did, I'd totally ignore gnome, orca and â
> Thanks,
> -j
> On May 11, 2013, at 12:05 AM, Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 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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> > 
> > 
> 
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