Getting emacspeak working on apple silicon M1
by Simon Wheatcroft
Hi All,
I recently got hold of an M1 MacBook Air. Thoughtt it might be worth sharing how I goT Emacs and emacspeak working.
mplayer is not available through homebrew as an apple silicon bottle as of yet. It also does not compile from source. So here are the steps to get up and running.
1. Goto utilities and make a copy of the terminal.app. I called it oldTerminal.
2. Goto get info on your new app, then toggle the run in Rosetta mode option.
3. Open your rosetta terminal and now install homebrew as normal
4. grab railwaycats emacs port and mplayer
brew tap railwaycat/emacsmacport
brew install --cask emacs-mac
brew install mplayer
5. Install the latest version of emacspeak in the normal way.
6. I found a few issues withTTS and needed the following lines in my .emacs.el
(setq tts-default-voice 'alex)
(setq mac-ignore-accessibility t)
7. I had a further issue with the voices install on my mac. I had to remove all voices except Alex and female siri in order for the TTS to work correctly under emacs.
Big thanks to TIm and Devon as i adapted posts from earlier threads to get it all working.
Simon
2 years
Any tips on optimal audio config for emacspeak?
by Derek Roberts
Hi all,
Hopefully I got the address right! :)
I'm trying to get Emacspeak working on a Raspberry Pi 4 running Arch. It
seems like no matter what I do, audio performance just isn't quite right.
With Alsa, there's noticeable lag when I do anything. The speech is slow to
interrupt, icons play slowly and make the whole emacs process seem to lag.
With Pulseaudio, the pauses between speech chunks are greatly lengthened. A
simple comma may take a full second to be processed.
Does anyone have tips for an optimal audio configuration? I'm guessing the
icon slowness is just SD card performance (class 10, they said!), but what
about the speech lag? In case it helps, I'm using latest Emacspeak from
github/tvraman/emacspeak with the espeak server.
...Or should I just blow the whole thing and switch to FreeBSD? :)
Thanks for your help,
Derek
2 years
Line echo and text-mode on emacspeak 53
by Greg Priest-Dorman
Hi Folks,
Well, my setup was quite old. I am now running emacspeak 53 and have
noticed an odd behavior. It happens with both espeak and outloud on a
relatively current linux box. I would like to know if it is also happening
to others. If it is, then I will dig into it more, if it isn't, then I
will look for a fault on my end.
When I am in a text-mode buffer, with line echo on, neither the return key
nor the command M-x newline create a new line. When I press the return key
I hear the line read back, but it does not create a newline. Once I toggle
line echo off ( C-e d l ) the key and the command work as expected. This
does not happen in an org-mode buffer. In an org buffer the return key
works as expected regardless of line-echo, but this is consistently
repeatable in a text-mode buffer. This happens both in a graphical emacs
window and at a terminal, this happens both with espeak and outloud as the
DTK_PROGRAM.
I am running GNU Emacs 26.1 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version
3.24.7) and a fresh install of Emacs 53.
Unfortunately I no longer have multiple machines to test on, my other
emacspeak setup is running 32 bit emacspeak 44 in a linux proot on android
so not exactly apples to apples.
Thanks,
Greg
2 years
a bit more poking with speech and alsa/pulse
by Derek Roberts
Hi all,
Figured I'd run some more tests with the espeak server. Using Pulse, I can
interrupt speech. It does take about a second to do, though, and punctuation
pauses
are
really
long! This is with audio icons either on or off. Any tips on getting the
remote (ssh and cloud) servers working, or anything else I can try for now?
Thanks,
Derek
2 years
Re: Any tips on optimal audio config for emacspeak?
by Greg Priest-Dorman
Hi Derek,
I'm swamped for the next couple of days so It may be next week before I can
get back to you with a full response.
Thanks for the additional info on your setup. You mentioned you were
experimenting with ssh-espeak. Does this mean you have another system with
espeak running on it?
Getting the remote speech server setup can be a little bit of a dance, I
forget that because I've been doing it for so long. I want to review
current remote setup before suggesting something that may no longer be best
practice. If someone else on the list is already up to speed on this
please chime in.
In the meantime if you want to try Tim's suggestions of ALSA vs Pulse, that
might help or at least provide some additional information. I'm curious if
you note any differences with audio icons off versus audio icons on as that
change has actually made a significant difference on some of the
lightweight systems I use.
Do keep us informed of anything you test or discover.
More soon,
Greg
-
Greg Priest-Dorman
On Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 7:29 PM Derek Roberts <bigd.vi.guy(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Tim and Greg,
>
> Thanks for your responses! I'm running 32-bit Arch on a 2GB Pi 4. I've
> tried in a desktop environment and a console before, but prefer console
> anyway (especially on the Pi). My biggest concerns are the speech
> latency/unresponsiveness. It seems like interrupting speech is a lot of
> work, it can take a few seconds for Emacspeak to start reading a new line
> or prompt, or even just to stop speech with c-e s.
> I tried setting up ssh-espeak, though I'm not quite sure what I'm doing,
> and can get speech when I run it myself, but not when I run it with
> Emacspeak. It seems to be waiting for something that apparently never
> happens. I set DTK_PROGRAM, and when I use the run script at the root of
> the repository, it starts the speech server, then hangs. If I then hit c-c,
> the server process errors out, and emacs starts, loads emacspeak, and gives
> a bunch of errors about dtk things and processes not running. If I try
> loading emacs first, then loading Emacspeak, I just get all the dtk and
> process things. What'd I do to the poor thing?
> I've always been fascinated with Emacs/Emacspeak, and would like to
> explore what people are talking about with how cool it is as a
> primary interface. I'd love any tips BTW!
>
> Hopefully I was able to satisfactorily answer everything. I appreciate
> your help!
>
> Thanks,
> Derek
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 2:05 PM Greg Priest-Dorman <priestdo(a)budgardr.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Derek,
>>
>> I do not have any Pi 4 experience. I did run emacspeak on the second
>> version of the Pi but only as a test, the performance did not meet my
>> needs. I have run emacspeak as my primary system on a number of small, low
>> power devices over the years, from 486 hardware, various SBCs up through
>> first generation Google Glass. So hopefully I can help. I should say though
>> that on the early embedded and slower CPUs (386, 400 mHz or slower
>> pentiums, early xscale and such) I was using dedicated text-to-speech
>> hardware or additional sound boards and not asking the CPU to do all the
>> TTS heavy lifting.
>>
>> Tim's suggestions are exactly the process I would suggest. Think about
>> ways to separate out and separately test the various tasks your system is
>> trying to do. Then start putting together those tasks in ways that will
>> reveal issues.
>>
>> It also may be possible to reduce the audio latency simply by eliminating
>> other tasks your Pi is engaged in while you are in emacspeak. A relatively
>> simple thing to try is to reduce as much as possible what your Pi is doing
>> when you're running emacspeak and generating TTS. Even within emacs,. for
>> example, does turning on or off audio icons change the latency you are
>> experiencing in text-to-speech? Out of emacs. are any other audio
>> processes running at the same time? If you are in a windowing environment
>> can you try running from a console and not having the windowing system up?
>>
>> A little more involved but well worth trying are things like running the
>> speech server on another machine and connecting the Pi to that. Do you have
>> another machine from which you can run the speech server? We can help you
>> and set up emacspeak on the Pi to use the remote speech server. Not as a
>> long-term solution, but as a test. Or, If you have another machine running
>> emacspeak and can use the Pi as the speech server you can really start to
>> examine whether the Pi is up to the task of smoothly turning emacspeak
>> output to speech. These kinds of things can help you quickly zero in on
>> where the latency is coming from.
>>
>> So that our suggestions can be targeted to your skills and needs, can you
>> give us a little background on your computer skills and emacspeak
>> experience if any?
>>
>> Tell us a little more about your Pi and Arch setup. Are you running in a
>> windowing environment or just a console session? Are you using a 32-bit or
>> 64-bit operating system (I don't know if Arch on the pie is 64-bit) How
>> much memory does it have? If you have enough, setting up a RAM disk will
>> let you test your thought that your SD card may be the source of some of
>> your latency.
>>
>> Lastly, what are your goals or expectations? Are you exploring the limits
>> of your Pi or are you looking to build a small portable emacspeak
>> environment (whether that's on a Pi or not). What it is you're trying to do
>> here as this will also help us help you get there.
>>
>> Looking back at this post I know I'm asking a lot, tell us as much or as
>> little as you like, we will try and help.
>>
>> Thanks for asking interesting questions,
>>
>> Greg
>>
>> -
>> Greg Priest-Dorman
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 9:44 PM Tim Cross <theophilusx(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> You have the right address! Welcome. You are actualy only the 3rd person
>>> to post to this list since it moved from the old home at Vassar.
>>>
>>> Sadly, I have no experience with running Emacspeak on a Pi. I'm not
>>> familiar with the performance characteristics of the Pi. One thing you
>>> could try is sending speech directly to the espeak server (via the
>>> command line - just run ./espeak and then queue speech by typing a q
>>> followed by some words inside { and }. Then hit 'd' to have it speak.
>>> There is also an espeak command which comes as part of the espeak
>>> software that you can use to turn a text file into speech. This will at
>>> least give you and idea whether it is the TTS which is slow or something
>>> else.
>>>
>>> One thing I do remember is that the performance of espeak can be
>>> improved by ensuring it is built for the correct audio interface. i.e.
>>> Alsa or Pulse audio. Make sure you have built it for the interface you
>>> plan to use.
>>>
>>> I do know on other platforms, either Linux or macOS, there is little
>>> latency and speech happens quickly. It can sometimes take a bit of time
>>> to interrupt speech - this depends on how much has been sent to the
>>> speech server. There is a play off between speech quality and how fast
>>> it can be interrupted. More speech sent at once gives better quality,
>>> but then takes longer to interrupt the speech. Shorter allows quick
>>> interruption, but at the cost of speech quality.
>>>
>>> A lot of people have reported that Pulse Audio has poor performance
>>> compared to Also. I have been running pulse audio for years without any
>>> performance problems (there were problems in the early days, but that
>>> was a long time ago).
>>>
>>> Both Alsa and pulse audio have a fair amount of configuration options.
>>> On Linux, I've not needed to do any performance tuning when running on
>>> 64 bit systems for years. It is possible you may need to look into this
>>> in order to get a configuration which is suitable for the Pi. Probably
>>> need to ask for assistance in a Pi specific community for this as I
>>> don't think many people run emacspeak on a Pi.
>>>
>>> Tim
>>>
>>> Derek Roberts <bigd.vi.guy(a)gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>> > Hi all,
>>> >
>>> > Hopefully I got the address right! :)
>>> > I'm trying to get Emacspeak working on a Raspberry Pi 4 running Arch.
>>> It
>>> > seems like no matter what I do, audio performance just isn't quite
>>> right.
>>> > With Alsa, there's noticeable lag when I do anything. The speech is
>>> slow to
>>> > interrupt, icons play slowly and make the whole emacs process seem to
>>> lag.
>>> > With Pulseaudio, the pauses between speech chunks are greatly
>>> lengthened. A
>>> > simple comma may take a full second to be processed.
>>> > Does anyone have tips for an optimal audio configuration? I'm guessing
>>> the
>>> > icon slowness is just SD card performance (class 10, they said!), but
>>> what
>>> > about the speech lag? In case it helps, I'm using latest Emacspeak from
>>> > github/tvraman/emacspeak with the espeak server.
>>> > ...Or should I just blow the whole thing and switch to FreeBSD? :)
>>> >
>>> > Thanks for your help,
>>> > Derek
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > Emacspeak mailing list -- emacspeak(a)emacspeak.org
>>> > To unsubscribe send an email to emacspeak-leave(a)emacspeak.org
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Tim Cross
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Emacspeak mailing list -- emacspeak(a)emacspeak.org
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to emacspeak-leave(a)emacspeak.org
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>> Emacspeak mailing list -- emacspeak(a)emacspeak.org
>> To unsubscribe send an email to emacspeak-leave(a)emacspeak.org
>>
>
2 years
Emacspeak evil mode
by Tim Cross
Hi Raman,
I've been playing with evil mode a bit and have made some changes to
emacspeak-evil.el. The changes are fairly minor, but figured it would be
good to add them back into the emacspeak base. The changes are
1. Made a couple of the functions less noisy wrt auditory icons. The
original version played an auditory icon whenever you moved up/down a
line. I found this a little excessive as often you would not be able to
clearly hear the line because of the auditory icon and in general, it
just made things too 'busy' noise wise. All I did was duplicate the
advice block and removed the auditory icon call for those functions in
the alternative defadvice block.
2. There were a couple of missing functions that just didn't provide
voice feedback. I've added them.
3. The function you had to 'fix' C-e wasn't working in one instance
because the 'stealing' of C-e was in a different keymap. I've added it.
I have attached my modified emacspeak-evil.el file. A basic diff will
highlight the changes.
Tim
--
Tim Cross
2 years
List and Archive progress
by Greg Priest-Dorman
A few things to share about the new list and the site at www.emacspeak.org.
Blocked mail:
Five of the addresses I imported from the existing emacspeak list are not
getting the new list's messages. Two are being rejected due to our mail
host's IP address being on a reject list maintained by CSI Cloudmark. I
have again requested a reset from Cloudmark. Cloudmark's page says they
will "look into it" and only contact me if they need more information from
me. So, we wait and see. The other 3 bouncing addresses give the message
"timed out while receiving the initial server greeting". Some of the
addresses may no longer be valid but at least one of them has posted as
recently as December. I have written to each individual from a gmail
account to see if that gets through or bounces. Time will tell. In the
meantime, if you are not getting your list messages (perhaps you are
reading this from the usenet gateway or the hyperkitty archive) please let
me know and we will figure out what we need to do.
Archive of messages from before the move:
First off, all existing links from the old Vassar archive at
www.cs.vassar.edu/~priestdo/emacspeak are now correctly redirecting to the
pages under www.emacspeak.org/VCCS-archive so any links to specific emails
returned by web searches or in posted articles to the old site will
continue to work! Eventually Vassar might remove that rewrite rule but that
will likely not happen soon. Much thanks to Matt, the current VCCS Systems
Admin for his help there. If you have any web pages with specific links to
the archive, please change "www.cs.vassar.edu/~priestdo/emacspeak/" to "
www.emacspeak.org/VCCS-archive/" to ensure the links will continue to
properly resolve.
Additionaly, Jon Pielaet has been helping gather all the emails missing
from the existing archive. In the near future we should have all missing
emails from 2015 forward available in the archive as well. Once there I
will add search functionality.
Help request:
If anyone here has experience with importing existing mail messages into
hyperkitty please write me off list. I'd like to get the old list messages
into the new archive. The docs say it is possible, but if someone here has
already done it, talking with you will save Tim and I a bunch of time
getting it done!
Lastly, I didn't math so good. Looking back I see the first message I
posted announcing the list at Vassar was on May 3, 1996. I thought it was
in 1995. So the list was there under 25 years not over 25 years as I had
thought.
That's it for me. As always, please let me know if you have any problems or
issues using the list or website.
Greg
2 years
