Re: Severe issue installing emacspeak for Ubuntu users

["Bill Dengler(win8)" <billkd2008@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here are some notes for an accessible install from source that someone 
sent me on the Orca list.
Hope they help someone.
*** Installing Emacs 24

$ sudo apt-get install emacs24

If you want to install Emacs snapshots, which come out every couple of 
days, I came across the following. I didn't have any trouble with the 
snapshots, but I don't need to be on the bleeding edge when it comes to 
Emacs, and my apt-get upgrade runs more quickly if I just stick with 
Emacs24.

I got the following instructions from 
http://sinewalker.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/install-emacs24-snapshot-on-debian-ubuntu-and-windows-7/

Ubuntu

I’m running Ubuntu 11.10 in a VirtualBox on work’s Windows 7 machine. As 
mentioned at Julien Danjou’s page,
Damien Cassou makes a version of the same emacs-snapshot for Ubuntu, 
which is hosted at Launchpad. You add it and install simalarly:

Add the PPA (Personal Package Archive). This also imports the key:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cassou/emacs

Update your package database

$ sudo apt-get update

Install emacs-snapshot

$ sudo apt-get install emacs-snapshot

*** Installing Emacspeak

**** Getting and Making Emacspeak

I downloaded the latest Emacspeak, emacspeak-37.0.tar.bz2, from 
http://code.google.com/p/emacspeak/.

fter unpacking this file, I went into the resulting directory, i.e. 
emacspeak-37.0, and ran the following commands:

$ make config
$ make emacspeak

$ sudo apt-get install texinfo

$ sudo make install

Note that in the future I want to change the prefix to /usr/local before 
making Emacspeak, at least until I figure out how to package it.

I also went into /usr/bin/emacspeak and changed the last line to be:

exec emacs -l 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el $INITSTR 
$CL_ALL

**** Making the eSpeak Server

I installed the following dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install tcl8.4 tclx8.4 tk8.4 tcl8.4-dev libasound2-dev

I got this list from the Voxin scripts, but I need to double chek it.

I also needed to install the following development package:

$ sudo apt-get install libespeak-dev

I went into /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/servers/linux-espeak 
and ran:

$ sudo make all

In the servers directory, I ran

$ ./espeak

to make sure the server was working.

Now

$ emacspeak -e

came up with emacspeak talking and using eSpeak.

**** Recompiling eSpeak to Use PulseAudio

Unfortunately, the last syllable spoken is always truncated making it 
unusable.

(Note to bill: I've heard this has been changed in newer versions of 
Debian/Ubuntu, so this step may no longer be necessary. If you don't 
have the latency problem with truncated final syllables, just skip this 
step.)

I fixed this by downloading the source code for eSpeak and compiling it 
for runtime, which uses PulseAudio if it's running and PortAudio otherwise.

I went to http://espeak.sourceforge.net/download.html and downloaded the 
file espeak-1.46.02-source.zip.

I had to install the library development packages for PulseAudio and 
PortAudio.

$ sudo apt-get install libpulse-dev libportaudio-dev

Now after unpacking the source code for eSpeak, I went into the source 
directory, espeak-1.46.02-source/src, and I made the following changes 
to the Makefile:

#DATADIR=/usr/share/espeak-data
DATADIR=/home/chaltain/Tools/share/espeak-data

#PREFIX=/usr
PREFIX=/home/chaltain/Tools

# 'runtime' uses pulseaudio if it is running, else uses portaudio
AUDIO = runtime
#AUDIO = portaudio

Now I run the commands:

$ make all
$ make install

This creates new eSpeak libraries and binaries, using the runtime 
option, and places them in my ~/Tools directory.

Now to start Emacspeak with eSpeak and these new libraries, I run the 
commands:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/chaltain/Tools/lib
$ emacspeak -e

aNow Emacspeak comes up and I don't have the latency issues.

I ended up adding the line

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/chaltain/Tools/lib

to the file /usr/bin/emacspeak.

Note that I exported the variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH instead of running the 
following command:

$ sudo ldconfig /home/chaltain/Tools/lib

so that I'd only run emacspeak with this new library and not making the 
change globally, so as not to impact Orca if I did something wrong.

When using ldconfig, note you can use

$ ldconfig -p | grep espeak

to see which eSpeak library is being used.

**** Getting Emacspeak with eSpeak to use an US English voice

Based on a tip I saw in a mailing list thread, I went into the file 
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/servers/linux-espeak/tclespeak.cpp, 
and I commented out the following line in the preferred languages section:

"en-uk", // english

and I added the following line:

"en-us", // english-us

I than ran $ sudo make.

After doing this, I no longer needed the line

(setq espeak-default-voice-string 'en-us)

in my ~/.emacs file.

Maybe if I'd just added the line for en-us then this variable setting 
might have been needed.

Bill
On 8/16/2013 9:22 PM, T. V. Raman wrote:
> The emacspeak list is emacspeak@xxxxxxxxxxx -- you need to
> subscribe to it. Copying this list on your message.
> > > > > > "cg" == cg  <cg@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>      cg> Dear Dr. Raman,
>      cg>
>      cg> I have two questions:
>      cg>
>      cg> 1) I tried to post the following on the emacspeak
>      cg> mailinglist a few weeks ago. However, I wonder if it has
>      cg> arrived at all, it seems the mailingserver isn't
>      cg> working. I didn't receive any copies, and moreover, I do
>      cg> not receive digest mails from the server at all. The same
>      cg> holds for other people who I know have tried to use the
>      cg> list.
>      cg>
>      cg> 2) I would be very grateful if you could look into the
>      cg> issue (see below).
>      cg>
>      cg> Thanks in advance!
>      cg>
>      cg> Chide Groenouwe,
>      cg>
>      cg> from the Netherlands
>      cg>
>      cg> -------- Original Message --------
>      cg>
>      cg> 		SUBJECT: Severe issue installing emacspeak for
>      cg> Ubuntu users
>      cg>
>      cg> 		DATE: 2013-08-03 21:15
>      cg>
>      cg> 		FROM: cg <cg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>      cg>
>      cg> 		TO: emacspeak@xxxxxxxxxxx
>      cg>
>      cg> Dear Emacspeak developers, in particular Dr Raman,
>      cg>
>      cg> Are you already aware of the following severe issue for
>      cg> Ubuntu users (and related Linux distributions), (posted
>      cg> by someone else, but also affects me, and others):
>      cg>
>      cg> https://code.google.com/p/emacspeak/issues/detail?id=7&thanks=7&ts=1369589431
>      cg> [2]
>      cg>
>      cg> Here a copy paste:
>      cg>
>      cg> What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. Install via apt
>      cg> package 2. Run emacspeak &
>      cg>
>      cg> What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
>      cg>
>      cg> The expected output: 'a talking computer' But I see (and
>      cg> three other people who tried it): process speaker not
>      cg> running
>      cg>
>      cg> What version of the product are you using? On what
>      cg> operating system?
>      cg>
>      cg> I am using the latest version in the apt repository of
>      cg> ubuntu/linux mint. Details about my operation system:
>      cg>
>      cg> Linux Mint 14 - 64 Bit
>      cg>
>      cg> Please provide any additional information below.
>      cg>
>      cg> I'm wondering if this bug is known by the emacspeak
>      cg> community. I asked three other people running ubuntu if
>      cg> it worked 'out of the box', but they got the same error
>      cg> messages. I think that an application in the apt
>      cg> repository must be capable of running directly, without
>      cg> user interaction to fix broken things (see:
>      cg> http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/install-guide/troubleshooting.html
>      cg> [1] ), I really like the opensource community and I have
>      cg> a lot of respect for people who are programming in there
>      cg> free time for others. I hope this bug can be fixed. Then
>      cg> your product would be perfect!
>      cg>
>      cg> Thanks in advance,
>      cg>
>      cg> Chide Groenouwe
>      cg>
>      cg>
>      cg>
>      cg> Links: ------ [1]
>      cg> http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/install-guide/troubleshooting.html
>      cg> [2]
>      cg> https://code.google.com/p/emacspeak/issues/detail?id=7&amp;thanks=7&amp;ts=1369589431

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