Re: New to Emacspeak - The Red Hat experience (long)

[Barak Zalstein <bzalstein@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quick retrospect:
(Oh really, that fast? )

Having installed a distribution once doesn't help you know all about it.
It is always good to do a little research before jumping to conclusions 
(or typing action).
In my case, installing Red Hat packages would be much easier if I only 
asked myself what's
the *real* difference between the various installation types (or what 
components exist in one and
are missing in the others).

I have no idea, unless directed to, how I could teach myself  not to 
overlook documents such as the speakup
HOWTO for installing Red Hat.

http://www.linux-speakup.org/ftp/disks/redhat/HOWTO_INSTALL.html

The title could drive me away, after all I'm installing a software 
speech synthesizer.
I should have known better: if a document aims to cover everything  that 
allows a blind computer user to install Red Hat, it will surely cover 
all the possible aspects along the way, (making redundant some of my 
experience below)

Janina Sajka wrote:
It's that old thing about making assumptions. Best not to.

Barak Zalstein wrote:

> New user Installing emacspeak - The Red Hat experience.
>
> Prerequisite: Not much.
>
> Introduction:
> As a supplemental to a previous thread (Advice for a new user)
> Here are my notes from my experience installing emacspeak on a fresh 
> Red Hat 9.
> The ordering of the sections/events is chronological, but not necessarily
> logical ;-)
>
> The first 3 steps may be considered off-topic, people who know their way
> around GNU/Linux should feel free to skip them.
> These steps still might be useful if you're in a culture shock, though.
>
> About notation: I am using the $ (dollar) symbol as the beginning of 
> command
> lines that I have executed (either from a terminal or from an Emacs shell
> buffer).
> Of course, you'll need to try them yourself because as my familiarity 
> with
> Emacs grew, I started using dired mode commands instead of typing them 
> in  a shell (so I might have forgotten few change directory commands 
> here and
> there).
> I also stopped tracking where I'm root and where I'm not because at 
> one point
> I started using multiple terminals for that. If you see that one of the
> commands results with "permission denied" you'll know that you need to:
> $ su
>
> I have written this in a style that should allow one to follow-me 
> follow-me,
> even if he/she is completely clueless, but someone will have to try 
> this out,
> (probably with a little rewriting/adaptation to other distributions).
>
> Let's go.
>
> 1. Download and burn Red Hat 9 CD #1 to CD #3.
> One can use ftp.redhat.com or (faster) bittorrent for that.
> Note that you can actually buy these CDs instead, as a token of good 
> will toward
> Red Hat developers.
> (I know that Free speech is not the same as Free beer.
> But when the price is zero, what's the difference, who cares?).
>
> 2. Reboot from CDROM and Install the system.
> I have chosen to install using the graphical display and also
> chose the workstation among the suggested setups (I knew I'll need GCC 
> sooner
> rather than later so desktop setup would probably not be good enough, 
> I can't
> rationalize why I didn't choose the server setup, I didn't choose the
> customized setup because I wanted to get over with the installation as
> quickly as possible).
> The rest of the installation is practically clicking "yes, yes, yes, 
> next,
> next, next".
> I was surprised that the sound test was successful (remembering that 
> Red Hat
> 8.0 didn't get along with my sound hardware), which means that I will 
> not need
> to compile ALSA today.
>
> 3. Now I was stuck. I couldn't connect to the internet as my USB ADSL 
> modem
> was not supported by this distribution yet.
> From my previous GNU/Linux experience I knew that I have to get an 
> eciadsl
> driver.
> Unfortunately, NTFS was not supported, so even if I had the software 
> packages
> that I needed on my Windows partition, I would not be able to access 
> them.
> Fortunately I was able to use an internet connected computer + CD 
> burner for
> getting and burning that ADSL driver (eciadsl-usermode-0.7).
> The installation process of that driver, along with mplayer (a 
> video/audio
> playback utility) is clearly beyond the scope of this text.
>
> Let's just say that in order to proceed further with Emacspeak I 
> needed to
> verify that my system has some basic functionality.
> I checked that by using commands like:
> $ wget www.gnu.org
> Got index.html in the working directory, which means that my internet
> connection is OK.
> $ mplayer am_I_a_pirate.mp3
> If it can play sound files, surely it can synthesize speech.
>
> I later also installed lynx so I'll be able to surf and download stuff 
> without
> going to graphical mode.
> I think that this will also help me improve my not-using-a-mouse 
> skills (even
> though there's nothing wrong with Mozilla or other preinstalled 
> browsers).
>
> 4. On with the emacspeak installation:
> In order to get the software packages that I need, I have used google 
> to search
> for the terms "emacspeak", "espeakf", "eflite" and just followed the 
> links.
> I ended up with the following things to do:
> * wget 
> http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/emacspeak/emacspeak-18.tar.gz 
>
> $ tar zxvf emacspeak-18.tar.gz
> $ cd emacspeak-18.0
> $ less README
> $ make config
>
> That command failed with the error:
> "
> emacs -batch -q -no-site-file -l cus-dep.el -f 
> custom-make-dependencies "."
> Cannot open load file: cus-dep.el
> make[1]: *** [cus-load.el] Error 255
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/barak/downloads/emacspeak-18.0/lisp'
> make: *** [config] Error 2
> "
>
> Maybe the error happend because I was running it from an Emacs shell 
> buffer?
> Trying the same command from the command line didn't help.
> Check if the README/INSTALL file has something about it.
> README points to Makefile, INSTALL file nonexistent.
> The Makefile comments tell me that I should do
> $ make config SRC=`pwd`
> Didn't help. Ok, maybe I'll check it later, trying the RPM package.
> $ rpm -i emacspeak-18.0-1.i386.rpm
> "error: Failed dependencies:
>    tclx is needed by emacspeak-18.0-1"
>
> Ok, here's tclx package on cd #3.
> $rpm -i /mnt/cdrom1/RedHat/RPMS/tclx-8.3-88.i386.rpm
> "error: Failed dependencies:
>    libtk8.3.so is needed by tclx-8.3-88"
>
> What have I done to deserve this?       (BTW, I saw no graphical tool 
> to handle these specific packages, except for
> right clicking the rpm file which didn't work neither).
>
> RedHat CD #3 contains emacspeak-17.0 RPM, with a similar dependency 
> nightmare.
> Going like crazy over every package that seems relevant and doing "rpm 
> -i"
> was futile.
>
> 5. Short break:
> Interstingly, RedHat CD #1 contains README-Accesibility which refers to
> Emacspeak.
> It also mentions w3 and recommends installing it by
> $ rpm -ivh ftp://people.redhat.com/jlamb/w3-4.0pre.44-1.i386.rpm
> Luckily no dependencies this time.
> Running it from Emacs doesn't seem to work, though:
> "Cannot open load file: w3-e21".
>
> 6. Completing Emacspeak package build:
> Let's try Emacspeak 17 from source, or shall we go doing something else?
> Remembering the original Emacspeak 18 error I tried to locate the 
> missing file.
> From Emacs, the command M-x locate, with cus-dep.el as parameter yields:
>    /usr/share/emacs/21.2/lisp/cus-dep.elc
> Oh, I see. The RedHat installation had a byte-compiled version of the
> cus-dep.el file that Emacspeak needs.
>
> So if I had installed Emacs from source everything would just be fine,
> right?
> $ wget ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs
> got index.html
> I browsed it using lynx and learned that if I want to be updated and 
> stable
> I'll need to get emacs-21.3.tar.gz
> (I should probably set up my Emacs so that the command 
> browse-url-of-buffer
> will use lynx as default).
> $ wget ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-21.3.tar.gz
> $ tar zxvf emacs-21.3.tar.gz
> Skimming through the README and INSTALL files reveals that what I need 
> to do
> is:
> $ ./configure
> $ make
> as root:
> $ make install
> And that's all is needed from the GNU Emacs side.
>
> So I came back to the extracted emacspeak-18.0 directory and type
> $ make config
> Yes!
> No errors, and it told me "Now type make emacspeak".
> $ make emacspeak
> Again, smooth, no errors, and it told me:
> "Now check installation of  the speech server.
> See Makefile for instructions."
> And I did.
> The most important piece of information is that Emacspeak is using
> tcl and I should probably have one before moving on to eflite/espeakf.
> $ which tcl
> "/usr/bin/which: no tcl in 
> (/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/barak/bin)
> ".
> Oh no, not again. I was sure that my earlier rpm bashing had installed 
> tcl
> at least 3 times.
>
> 7. Installing tcl
> Forget the RPM, I'm going to the source.
> Where can I get it?
> Google for "tcl", "download" .
> www.tcl.tk is the place.
> It also has precompiled binaries, so it's ok if I chicken.
> Using lynx for downloading the files failed so I had to switch from my
> comfortable text terminal back to X and launched Mozilla.
> I later learned that when using lynx, downloading a file and saving a 
> file
> are two different actions (one doesn't mean the other, yes to one may 
> be a no
> to the other).
>
> I guess that's a proper place to mention that Control-Alt-F1 up to
> Control-Alt-F6 key combinations switch between various text terminals
> (easier to read with my glaucoma) and Control-Alt-F7 brings us back
> to the graphical screen.
>
> Anyway,
> $ tar zxvf tcl8.4.2-src.tar.gz
> simile with README, unix/README.
> $ cd tcl8.4.2/unix
> $ ./configure
> $ make
> as root
> $ make install
>
> $ which tcl
> still can't find it.
> Reading the unix/README and the output of "make install" gave me an idea:
> maybe I'll just do as root:
> $ ln -sf /usr/local/bin/tclsh8.4 /usr/local/bin/tcl
>
> Am I sure that I know what I'm doing? The next steps will tell.
>
> 8. Install a speech synthesizer.
> Unlike espeakf, I already got eflite to work in the past, so I probably
> should start with what I know.
> Now might be a good time to freshen up my memory with
> https://www.emacspeak.org/VCCS-archive/msg01099.html
> in order to prepare for the next steps.
> There is no harm in typing
> $ make install
> from the directory where I've extracted and built emacspeak-18.0d, as 
> I'm going
> to use the other scripts anyway.
>
> $ tar zxvf flite-1.2-release.tar.gz
> $ cd flite-1.2-release
> checking out README (no INSTALL file, but the README has the info)
> Even if you are not a programmer, It is always interesting to browse the
> soruce directory.
> For example, while checking the COPYING file, I learned that flite is 
> free
> software but released under a different license than the GPL.
> $ ./configure
> $ make
> No, the computer is not dead. It's just compiling very large files.
> Ok, it is stuck for too long in:
> " gcc   -I../../lang/usenglish  -I../../lang/cmulex -I../../include -g 
> -O2 -Wall    -c cmu_us_kal16_diphone.c -o cmu_us_kal16_diphone.o"
>
> Let's change -O2 to -O0 and hope that it will solve it.
> $ cd ~/downloads/flite-1.2-release/lang/cmu_us_kal16/
> $ gcc   -I../../lang/usenglish  -I../../lang/cmulex -I../../include -g 
> -O0 -Wall    -c cmu_us_kal16_diphone.c -o cmu_us_kal16_diphone.o
> Few minutes later...
> Well, I'm killing it.
> (Later Examination of the C file reveals that optimization level probably
> doesn't matter in this case, as we are compiling a file with very large
> data arrays).
> Compilers, can't live with them, can't shoot them.
>
> Let's see if we have any alternative on the system.
> $ gcc
> (and pressing tab instead of enter)
> Found gcc296, not an _official_ GCC release but still one of my 
> favorites.
> $ gcc296   -I../../lang/usenglish  -I../../lang/cmulex -I../../include 
> -g -O0 -Wall    -c cmu_us_kal16_diphone.c -o cmu_us_kal16_diphone.o
> That almost worked like a charm, except for the following  message:
> "/tmp/ccqPRq3D.s: Assembler messages:
> /tmp/ccqPRq3D.s:2165899: Warning: .stabs: description field '10002' 
> too big, try a different debug format"
>
> I give up building flite, let's see what about eflite
>
> $ tar zxvf eflite-0.3.6.tar.gz
> $ cd eflite-0.3.6
> Tired of typing configure make and make install, maybe I'll prepare a
> script called "the_usual_please.csh" .
> But not this time:
> The INSTALL also tells me that configure needs to accept an additional 
> switch,
> so I configure it like this:
> $ ./configure flite_dir=/home/barak/downloads/flite-1.2-release
> The INSTALL file tells me that I don't need to install flite, I only need
> flite libraries, so maybe it will work after all without successfully 
> building
> flite.
> $ make
> Surprisingly, the make process is finished successfully.
> $ make install
>
> Now I prepare the emacspeak-eflite script as discussed in the emacspeak
> mailing list archives:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> ## /usr/local/bin/emacspeak-eflite - execute emacs with speech 
> enhancements
> ## use EFLITE
>
> ## based on
> #$Id: emacspeak.sh.def,v 17.0 2002/11/23 01:29:08 raman Exp $
>
> if [ -f $HOME/.emacs ]
> then
>    INITSTR="-l $HOME/.emacs"
> fi
>
> CL_ALL=""
> for CL in $* ; do
>    if [ "$CL" = "-o" ]; then
>        DTK_PROGRAM=outloud
>        export DTK_PROGRAM
>                elif [ "$CL" = "-d" ]; then
>        DTK_PROGRAM=dtk-soft
>        export DTK_PROGRAM
>    elif [ "$CL" = "-q" ]; then
>        INITSTR=""
>    else
>        CL_ALL="$CL_ALL $CL"
>    fi
> done
>
> export EMACS_UNIBYTE=1
> #export DTK_TCL=/usr/bin/eflite
> export DTK_TCL=/usr/local/bin/eflite
>
> exec emacs -q -l 
> /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el $INITSTR 
> $CL_ALL
> ### end /usr/local/bin/emacspeak-eflite
>
> $ chmod +x emacspeak-eflite
> $ cp emacspeak-flite /usr/local/bin
>
> $ emacspeak-eflite
> It's alive!!!
>
> 9. Make typing a bit more comfortable.
> In order to minimize the number of awkward positions for my fingers.
> I needed to exchange the location of Caps-Lock and Control.
> (After blind typing for awhile in Emacs, you find out that you move a lot
> using the Control and Alt/Meta keys, so you want to make your hand 
> move as
> little as possible before pressing it).
>
> Ok, so where is emacs2.kmap.gz?
>
> M-x locate with emacs2.kmap as parameter.
> nothing, but I found:
> /lib/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/emacs2.map.gz
> so opened the directory /lib/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/ as an Emacs dired
> buffer and executed the shell command on the file emacs2.map.gz by 
> putting
> point on the start of the file name, pressing the '!' key (that's 
> exclamation mark) and typing "loadkeys " (without the quotation marks).
> It worked. In which file  shall I put this command so that it will be 
> invoked when system starts up?
> I guess that  .bashrc is good enough, is it?
> I've logged into another terminal and saw that it works.
> I'll save the graphical user interface for later.
>
> 10. Time to festival.
> It's late, give me a decent RPM, please.
> rpmfind.net is where to go.
> The search engine in that site gave a proper link where to download 
> one such
> rpm, a.k.a festival-1.4.2-16.i386.rpm
> $ rpm -i festival-1.4.2-16.i386.rpm
> Good, let's see that it works.
> $ festival
> Festival starts with an interactive prompt
> $ (SayText "Please say something")
> And it does.
> $ (quit)
>
> 11. Going for espeakf.
> $ cvs -d 
> :pserver:anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxx:/cvsroot/espeakf login
> $ (pressing Enter as password)
> $  cvs -d 
> :pserver:anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxx:/cvsroot/espeakf co 
> espeakf
> The README says that copying the .pl file is sufficient, but since we 
> have
> as Makefile with an "install:" rule, why wouldn't we just type:
> $ make install
> Wait, not so fast. the line saying "DESTDIR=" should be changed into 
> something
> more meaninguful, something like:
> "DESTDIR= /usr/local/bin"
> $ make install
> That was stupid, should have read the Makefile more carefully.
> Undo changing DESTDIR.
>
> The README also says that I should do:
> $ export DTK_TCL=perl
> $ export DTK_PROGRAM=espeakf.pl
> I wonder what will happen if I'll type
> $ emacspeak
> (instead of running a customized script)
>
> Ok, Emacs is up and I face the same problem that I had on SuSE:
> It will only say special characters '?' (question mark) and '#' (pound).
> Wonder if I should debug it and improve my perl skills or should I just
> switch to another distribution (Debian?) and see what's going on there.
> Avoiding this problem won't make it go away, but I'll probably just
> dismiss it for awhile.
>
>
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