[Emacspeak] Emacspeak and Mac OS

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, tonight I just booted up my Mac Book Pro after several months of not
using it. I need to go somewhere and now need a laptop.

I updated to the latest version of Emacspeak and I have Emacs 28.1
installed (railwaycat's macports version).

Problem is, I cannot get the mac speech server to work. I recall posts
to the list with people having issues due to newer versions of python
being used on latest macOS. However, I am running an old mac book pro
which cannot be upgraded to macOS 12.x. It is running Big Sur
11.6.8. The python version is 2.7

When I try to run the server, I get an error telling me it cannot find
the foundation module. If I try to use pip to install the foundation
module I get other problems (likely due to the old 2.7 version of
python).

I then tried updating python to 3.10 and was able to install founation
module using pip. However, then the mac server tells me it cannot load
the PyObjCTools module. When I try to install that module, pip tells me
there is no version available for python 3.10.

This is the sort of frustration I always run into with python and the
very reason I absolutely hate it as being one of the worst language
environments I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. I'd rather
battle c#, visual basic and .NET!

CAn someone tell me what would be the easiest way to get a working mac
speech server on a mac book pro running big sur. Which python version
should I be using? Do I need to use an older version of Emacspeak to get
a version of the mac server which works with a pre pyton3 environment?
If I have to install a python3 environment, which one 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9
or 3.10? (I initially had 3.9 installed, but the mac server could not
find the foundation module despite pip telling me it was installed - and
yes, I was very careful to ensure the python interpreter, pip and
pyton-conf were all consistent 3.9 versions, even running just the
interpreter and trying to load the foundation module manually
failed). Can I use pip to install all necessary modules and which of
these will I need to install. If not, what/how should I install them? 

I've not gone down the rabbit hole of python virtual environments and
would like to avoid that route if possible - it should not be necessary
just to get the mac server working.

If I had more time, I would chase all this down myself, but I need to
get this system working quickly and have not got time to chase down all
the issues. I need a basic recipe which will work for Big Sur.