spd-conf worked in debian 8, but not debian 9/stretch

[Mark Peveto <southernprince73@gmail.com>]

When I try to use spe-conf to set speech dispatcher to work with libao instead of pulseaudio, spe-conf doesn't seem to work in stretch.
Here is output from my last try.
fpd-conf
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/spd-conf", line 10, in <module>
    sys.exit(speechd_config.main())
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/speechd_config/config.py", line 749, in main
    options.parse()
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'parse'

How do I go about correcting this short of reinstalling jessie?  I had a difficult enough time getting stretch to work properly, ao i'm loathed to do another
reinstall.
Thanks.


Mark Peveto
Registered Linux user number 600552
Everything happens after coffee!