Segmentation Fault with Emacspeak/Eflite

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

See the  /usr/share/doc/VIAVOICE file in the emacspeak install it
tells you where to get Viavoice from the Redhat site.

  >>>>> "Richard" == Richard C Bilson <rcbilson@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Richard> I'm doing some volunteer work for a community
    Richard> organization that is
 attempting to refurbish some old
    Richard> computers to run Linux and give them to
 those in need
    Richard> in our community.  Some of these people are visually
    Richard> impaired, and we like the idea of Emacspeak as a way to
    Richard> make these
 computers accessible.  Our only problem
    Richard> right now is that we can't make it
 work on a consistent
    Richard> basis.
 
 We're relying on sofware synthesis,
    Richard> specifically flite/eflite.
 I understand that ViaVoice
    Richard> is no longer (officially) available, and I
 don't know
    Richard> of any other alternatives.  We're experimenting right
    Richard> now
 on a P-100 -- flite is a fairly large drain on the
    Richard> CPU, but it can read
 text just fine from the command
    Richard> line.  Yes, it's a slow machine, but it's
 typical of
    Richard> the machines that we have to work with.
 
 Sometimes
    Richard> emacspeak works just fine.  Other times it starts loading
    Richard> up
 normally and then fails with the message "Process
    Richard> speaker not running".
 When run as /usr/bin/emacspeak,
    Richard> this error also seems to inhibit reading
 the .emacs
    Richard> file.  Sometimes it will print that same error for just
    Richard> about
 every keypress, other times some key press will
    Richard> cause it to wake up
 (M-x often does this).  Once it
    Richard> wakes up it works fine.  We have tried
 Emacspeak 15.0
    Richard> and 16.0, but we get the same behaviour with either.
 
    Richard> Being the intrepid programmer that I am, I sat down today
    Richard> to try and figure
 out what's going on.  What I found:
    Richard> 
 - if I (defvar dtk-debug 't) before loading
    Richard> emacspeak-setup.el, the
 tts-debug buffer contains
    Richard> "Process speaker segmentation fault" a couple of
    Richard> times.
 
 - if I examine the core file generated by
    Richard> eflite, I notice that it's
 failing in the "finish"
    Richard> signal handling function, with sig=17 (SIGCHLD);
 it
    Richard> fails because "lang" is null.
 
 This seems to narrow
    Richard> down the possible locations where the problem occurs
    Richard> (somewhere before "lang" gets initialized).  I'm
    Richard> suspicious that there's
 some kind of race condition in
    Richard> eflite, where it expects flite to be ready
 to go but
    Richard> the slow processor causes a fatal delay.  Unfortunately I
    Richard> don't
 know enough pthreads to grok the eflite source,
    Richard> so I'm wondering if anyone
 out there has any ideas, or
    Richard> has faced this problem before and solved it.
 
 Emacs
    Richard> version 20.7.2
 Emacspeak version 15.0
 Eflite version
    Richard> 0.3.3
 Flite version 1.1
 
 Thanks,
 
 Richard
    Richard> Bilson
 
    Richard> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Richard> To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your
    Richard> address on the
 emacspeak list send mail to
    Richard> "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
 subject of
    Richard> "unsubscribe" or "help"
 
��^��^��ݳ������I��_�jf����r��zY�yۖYo�����0��,��+��e��n�&{�ڙ����MTZ���������0��,��+��e��n�&{�ڙ��������

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"