Re: update on speech server issue

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have noticed some odd behavior with emacspeak if it is loaded after
a lot of other packages. I've got around this by making sure emacspeak
is loaded before anything else. 

On Debian based systems, there is an /etc/emacs/site-start.d directory
which contains the config/startup scripts for all the additional
Debian emacs packages. The files in this directory all start with a
number, which influences in what order they start. I put all my
emacspeak startup stuff in a file in this directory call
10emacspeak.el - as 10 is the lowest number in the directory, it
ensure emacspeak is loaded before any other package. 

I've never seen a SuSe based system, but expect they have a similar
setup as it seems quite common now (I believe Red Hat has something
similar). While I've never experienced emacspeak completely failing
if loaded too late, its still probably worth checking out.

Finally, Chris, while I've certainly experienced the "Process speaker
not running" and errors about no process associated with a buffer, in
the end it has always turned out to be something really simple. From
what you have said, all the indications are that emacspeak is loading,
but for some reason cannot communicate with the Tcl interpreter which
runs the dtk-exp script or the Tcl interpreter cannot find the dtk-exp
script or something associated with it. Don't give up - you should be
able to crack this problem with some methodical debugging and
thinking. 

My recommendation would be to go back to basics. Use only the Suse
packages. Use the tarball of emacspeak 21. Do a 'make clean' before
doing the 'make config' etc. Run through the checks outlined in the
makefile exactly as they are written. 

I would also try different combinations of command line switches for
emacs and don't use the emacspeak.sh script in case there is something
funky with the default shell settings on your system. Try starting
emacs with the -no-site-file and -q options and the -l option to just
load the emacspeak-setup.el file. Also make sure you haven't got a
suse based package of emacspeak installed - many distributions do
include a package for emacspeak, but it is usually out of date. 

Don't give up - its worth the effort! Pinching from others 'Its not
that emacspeak isn't user friendly, its just a little picky about its
friends!"

Tim


Jason White writes:
 > I notice that Emacs is loading various suse-specific startup files.
 > Normally this shouldn't create any problems, but you could try
 > temporarily removing those. There's probably a startup file in
 > /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp that loads everything else. If you can find
 > it, move it out of the way and try again.
 > 
 > My environment variables:
 > 
 > export DTK_PROGRAM=dtk-exp
 > export DTK_PORT=/dev/ttyS0
 > export DTK_TCL=tcl
 > export DTK_DEVICE="DECtalk Express"
 > 
 > Within emacs, run M-x shell and check the environment to be sure that
 > the settings are indeed correct when Emacs is running (just run the
 > set command without arguments from bash or any similar Bourne-like
 > shell).
 > 
 > Your other options:
 > 
 > 1. Remove the distribution-supplied version of Emacs, download Emacs
 >    and compile it from source.
 > 
 > 2. Install a different Linux distribution, or upgrade the existing
 >    one in case that helps.
 > 
 > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 > To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
 > emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
 > subject of "unsubscribe" or "help"
 > 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
subject of "unsubscribe" or "help"