Re: Activation of Speech Dispatcher under squeeze
Hi.
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 11:37:14AM +1000, Jason White wrote:
> I've looked at the bug report. I think the underlying problem is that upstream
> Speech-Dispatcher is moving toward a model in which the daemon is run by the
> user rather than system-wide.
>
> What I don't understand is how this model is supposed to accommodate scenarios
> such as the following.
>
> 1. BRLTTY (with speech support) loads early in the boot process.
> Speech-dispatcher either has to be run as root or as a non-root system user
> with access to the audio device, since nobody is logged in at that point.
>
> If the user later starts an X session then we don't want a second
> speech-dispatcher instance to be started, as this could then compete for the
> audio device with the global instance - exactly what Speech-Dispatcher is
> designed to prevent. Killing the global instance wouldn't work, since we still
> need console sessions to be accessible when the X session is terminated or if
> the user switches to a virtual console.
>
> 2. Same as above, but with Speakup as the assistive technology.
>
> 3. Gdm log-in, possibly in combination with any of the above scenarios.
> Likewise for other X-based log-in tools that might become accessible at some
> point.
>
> 4. Administrators who log in temporarily as root from a console session
> instead of using su or sudo. (No, I'm not one of those except in
> emergencies...)
>
> I think Debian should coordinate this upstream, but in the absence of a
> solution to the above issues I think running it as a system-wide daemon is the
> only reasonable default, prefearbly as a non-root system user with suitable
> permissions.
>
I agree with you. Problem is the last version of speech-dispatcher that can still be run system wide is 0.6.
Since the speech-dispatcher maintainer isn't a part of debian-accessibility, I don't see any way to get the package in
Squeeze down graded.
It looks like the future on Linux accessibility will be back to each screen reader providing it's own solution to managing the synth.
Speakup already has espeakup. Brltty still has direct support for several synths. In the future orca will end up being the only screen reader that
uses speech-dispatcher.
Kenny
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