Hey Tim, I am currently on my mobile so I did not make an effort to check with the latest emacspeak version. I am running a few weeks old version with a python 3.9 environment. However, the main issue with the environments was that the shebang in the Mac speech Server script points at the wrong environment. For a detailed write up, I would refer you to my mail from the 13th of May in this list - but I also copied the first paragraph: 1. Short answer, applicable if you do not have multiple python environments: In "emacspeak-directory/servers/mac": Change the first line from "#!/usr/bin/env python" to "#!/usr/bin/env python3" Run "pip3 install pyobjc" Run "python3 mac" and if you get a voice saying "emacspeak server" you are good to go. Best regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Till > On 30. Jul 2022, at 16:36, Tim Cross via Emacspeak <emacspeak(a)emacspeak.org&gt; wrote: > >  > OK, tonight I just booted up my Mac Book Pro after several months of not > using it. I need to go somewhere and now need a laptop. > > I updated to the latest version of Emacspeak and I have Emacs 28.1 > installed (railwaycat's macports version). > > Problem is, I cannot get the mac speech server to work. I recall posts > to the list with people having issues due to newer versions of python > being used on latest macOS. However, I am running an old mac book pro > which cannot be upgraded to macOS 12.x. It is running Big Sur > 11.6.8. The python version is 2.7 > > When I try to run the server, I get an error telling me it cannot find > the foundation module. If I try to use pip to install the foundation > module I get other problems (likely due to the old 2.7 version of > python). > > I then tried updating python to 3.10 and was able to install founation > module using pip. However, then the mac server tells me it cannot load > the PyObjCTools module. When I try to install that module, pip tells me > there is no version available for python 3.10. > > This is the sort of frustration I always run into with python and the > very reason I absolutely hate it as being one of the worst language > environments I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. I'd rather > battle c#, visual basic and .NET! > > CAn someone tell me what would be the easiest way to get a working mac > speech server on a mac book pro running big sur. Which python version > should I be using? Do I need to use an older version of Emacspeak to get > a version of the mac server which works with a pre pyton3 environment? > If I have to install a python3 environment, which one 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 > or 3.10? (I initially had 3.9 installed, but the mac server could not > find the foundation module despite pip telling me it was installed - and > yes, I was very careful to ensure the python interpreter, pip and > pyton-conf were all consistent 3.9 versions, even running just the > interpreter and trying to load the foundation module manually > failed). Can I use pip to install all necessary modules and which of > these will I need to install. If not, what/how should I install them? > > I've not gone down the rabbit hole of python virtual environments and > would like to avoid that route if possible - it should not be necessary > just to get the mac server working. > > If I had more time, I would chase all this down myself, but I need to > get this system working quickly and have not got time to chase down all > the issues. I need a basic recipe which will work for Big Sur. > _______________________________________________ > 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

With the server ported to Python3, there is no point in even trying to run it under python2.7. But the fix is simple, just copy over the mac server script from the past --- where past == before we updated the mac server to python3.

Rants usually lead to confusion and generate heat -- not light; so please keep your language dislikes and likes off the table. On your older Mac with Python 2.7, just replace servers/mac in your git checkout or install with servers/mac from an older emacspeak, e.g. Emacspeak 55.

What I think really causes confusion and leads to fragility is there seems to be multiple approaches to both how you install packages and how you crate/manage virtual environments, combined with a real problem with API stability. I'm not sure I've come across a language with as many version issues. CL is a language which also has a number of different ways to manage packages and do installations. However, it doesn't suffer from the versioning issues which seem to afflict Python.

Just for the record and to help avoid others running into similar, I should also say that it appears the mac server is not compatible with Python 3.10. I tried out that version because there are a number of deprecation warnings associated with pythong3.9, especially wrt package installation. Unfortunately, while running under python3.10 did look promising and the server would start and initially speak, it then just exists and won't produce speech. No errors or warnings are shown. Exact same setup with 3.9 seems to work fine.

For me, almost immediately. If I run ./mac at a command prompt, I hear the little bit of intro speech and the server sits their, looking like it is waiting for input. However, as soon as I hit any key, the server immediately exits. If I run Emacs, I here the initial spoken feedback, but then get no speech. There are no errors or warnings or anything saying something like "Process speaker not running" as you would normally see with other speech servers. Everything appears to work, but there is no speech output.

Note that with the homebrew 3.10 install, on my system, all the 'binaries' are put into /usr/local/opt/python(a)3.10/bin and none are linked into /usr/local/bin due to potential conflict with the homebrew python3. To resolve this, I added the pythong3.10 bin path to the start of my PATH variable.