emacspeak & audio icons

["T. V. Raman" <raman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

alamo1@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
 > 
 > I have been using emacspeak for 1 year and I love it.  It got me
 > through college and without it I would not be able to work on my sun
 > workstation at work.  Compared with JFW and other screen readers, it's
 > so much more rebust and dependable.

Glad it helped-- can I expect a cheque:-)
 >   
 > I use emacspeak at home on a linux system and at work on a sparc 5
 > running solaris.  Getting audio icons to work in my linux system was
 > trivial; however, I haven't got audio icons to work at
 > work. Interestingly enough, the play script works when I explicitly
 > play a sound file in the sounds subdirectory of
 > emacspeak.    

do the following to track this down: 
a) from the *scratch* buffer execute 
(emacspeak-auditory-icon 'open-object)
i.e. type the above and type C-j at the end of the line to
  execute the expression.
If you dont hear the icon (I suspect you wont)
check the following:
a) value of emacspeak-play-program
is this /usr/demo/SOUND/play or is it the emacspeak play
script?
b)check value of emacspeak-sounds-directory

c) See what filename emacspeak goes looking for when playing
an icon--evaluate
(emacspeak-get-sound-filename 'open-object)
and make sure that it is constructing the correct pathname.
> 
 > When I looked at the emacspeak-sounds.el, I found the following
 > comment; is this what I need to do?
 > (defvar emacspeak-play-args ""
 > Note: on sparc20's there is a sunos bug that causes the machine to crash if
 > you attempt to play sound when /dev/audio is busy.
 > It's imperative that you use the -i flag to play on sparc20's."
 > 
This comment applies if you use Sun's play executable that
comes in the /usr/demo/SOUND/play directory.
on my system it is 
/usr/demo/SOUND/play

If you use the above (which you should)
make sure you set the play-args to "-i" as documented.
If you  dont, at least on a sparc20 the workstation crashes
if two processes attempt to open the audio device
simultaneously--
the -i flag causes play to quit rather than trying to open
the device.


 > Do I just set the variable emacspeak-play-args to "-i" and re-run the
 > emacspeak Makefile?
you dont set it in the emacspeak sources-- you set it in
  your personal .emacs. 
> 
 > I enjoy the icons so much at home that I'd get a kick out of havving
 > them at work.
 > 
Can't live without them.
 > Mo
 > 

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

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