RE: Emacspeak installation information

[Alex Midence <alex.midence@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, it's a royal pain to get working.  Basically, here's what you have to do:

1.  Get the source via svn:
$ svn co http://emacspeak.googlecode.com/svn/trunk emacspeak
2.  Get the espeak development library packages.  (This is distro-specific so, do some digging)
3.  Get tcl8.4.
4. cd into the emacspeak directory and as root type make config
5.  Type make emacspeak as root.
6.  cd into the servers directory and find the linux-espeak directory and cd into it.
7.  Now, do a make; make install either as sudo or root.
8.  Issue the following environment variable command:
Export DTK_PROGRAM=espeak
9.  nano /usr/bin/emacspeak
10.  Arrow down to bottom of the file and get that -q out of there. Arrow up to the line referring to emacs in unary mode and put a hash in front of it to coment out.  Ctrl x and save.

After all that, type emacspeak at a command line prompt and all should be well.  Those of you shouting and hollering that it shouldn't be this hard are right but, trouble is, no one seems to either have the expertise or inclination to make it easier.



-----Original Message-----
From: kendell clark [mailto:coffeekingms@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2014 5:03 PM
To: Florian Beijers; emacspeak list
Subject: Re: Emacspeak installation information

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hi
Here, here. I run into this issue constantly. I've actually gotten emacspeak working, kind of, on arch. The pckage build is unmaintained, and I have to modify the build script just to get it to build. Then tclx builds empty binaries, and I have to try to remember what I did to get it working. Then I can't get daisy mode to work ... and the cycle repeats. Once I actually get into emacspeak and get the stuff working, it's phenomenal. The eloquence support is much g better than espeak, but I guess that'll get fixed eventually. Emacspeak is a fantastic concept ... If it just worked instead of returning with process speaker not working, that's because of tclx screwing up, by the way. We need good docs, and we need maintainers of the various distro's emacspeak packages.
Thanks
Kendell clark

On 09/15/2014 04:48 PM, Florian Beijers wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just finished reading through the Emacspeak at 20 article and 
> entered what I have dubbed my "Emacspeak loop"  again. This basically 
> consists of me wanting to try Emacspeak, building a vm of the latest 
> blind-friendly Linux distro out there to save time, downloading the 
> latest emacspeak, trying to set it up, failing, getting frustrated and 
> giving up. It has become a trend for me to wonder what strange, 
> unclear error will jump out at me next when I try to configure and 
> build Emacspeak. The installation howto that is available appears to 
> last have been updated about 12 years ago and scraping together bits 
> and pieces from this list , as well as other blogs, sometimes help me 
> enough to actually get a semi-stable instance of Emacspeak going if 
> I'm lucky. Now don't get me wrong, I really like the concept Emacspeak 
> is trying to portray. I am a computer science student myself and aim 
> for this to be my chosen career path. I'd like Emacspeak to be a part 
> of that, but if I keep having to work a day or more to make the system 
> boot up, let alone run smoothly, I am wondering where things are going 
> wrong.
> Shouldn't we take a bit of time to make this part of the emacspeak 
> experience a little more user-friendly? Think of writing up accurate 
> and contemporary installation docs? Perhaps change the installation 
> script so it actually looks for what speech system is currently being 
> used rather than making the user manually configure this, just to name 
> an example? I like the configurability Emacspeak provides. It gives 
> you the opportunity to change everything to your liking, but again, 
> this is no use to anybody if they can't get the system to work. I've 
> recommended Emacspeak to others in the past and more often than notwas 
> met with a reply sounding something like "Hmm ...yeah I've heard of it 
> and played around with it, but I never really got it to work ..." . I 
> think this is a shame. The more users Emacspeak has the better it can 
> become. Configurability is good, but sometimes it's also nice to have 
> a way to quickly get things to work. I just thought of something while 
> writing this long email, could vagrant not offer a solution here? 
> Offer pre-made linux VM's where Emacspeak is already configured? I'm 
> just throwing ideas out there, because I really think this needs to be 
> improved.
> 
> Regards, Florian
> 
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