GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 349571
Aplay terminates Fonix DECtalk, sometimes Orca
Last modified: 2006-08-02 14:08:05 UTC
Please describe the problem: If Orca is running using Fonix DECtalk, and aplay plays two sounds, speech stops. Sometimes Orca terminates. Steps to reproduce: 1. Launch Orca from GNOME terminal 2. In a different terminal window execute aplay /usr/share/sounds/phone.wav 3. Repeat step 2 Actual results: The first time, the sound is played; the second time it's played but Orca stops speaking. Expected results: The sound would be played and Orca would continue to speak. Does this happen every time? Yes Other information: While I can reproduce this 100% of the time, it seems to be the result of a very specific combination: 1. I can only reproduce it on my laptop which has the following: Ubuntu 6.06, current (as of this moment) Orca from CVS ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller I cannot reproduce this problem on either of my desktop computers (each of which has a dedicated sound card rather than onboard sound) 2. It only occurs with Fonix DECtalk; not festival Sometimes I get the following output from Orca: Traceback (most recent call last):
+ Trace 69876
return speaker.say(text)
return self.gnome_speaker.say(text) COMM_FAILURE
Restarting speech... Something looks wrong with speech. Aborting.
I'm unable to recreate this with Ubuntu Dapper Drake (v6.06). This is with Orca from CVS HEAD and using DECtalk v4.64. Could things to note. 1/ It's not recommended to run Orca from a gnome terminal window. Because gnome terminal is accessible, sometimes the output generated for that gnome terminal "confuses" Orca. If you've adjusted your ~/.orca/user-settings.py file so that everything is going to debug.out, then this might not be a problem. What I do is start Orca from an old xterm window or rlogin from another machine and run it from there (setting DISPLAY appropriately to make this work). 2/ What are your settings for: "Enable software sound mixing (ESD)" and "Play system sounds" under Preferences->Sound Both of mine are checked.
1. Thanks for the tip about using xterm! I'll try to get into that habit. 2. Both of mine are checked as well. I'm not surprised you couldn't reproduce it. I can't on my other 2 machines....
Will mentioned to me that the underlying sound support for Linux can vary from PC to PC. As this probably isn't an Orca specific problem, a gnome-speech problem or a problem with any of the GNOME modules, I'd like to close off this bug as NOTABUG. Will, any suggestions where to file a problem against the underlying sound system?
I have very little clue about where to point fingers on this one. :-( It can boil down to ALSA, OSS, ESD, etc., and I've never got a good handle on which distribution supports which and/or which sound cards are better supported than others.
Thanks Will. Joanie, I'm closing out this bug. As you are running Ubuntu, I suggest filing a bug in their bug tracking system on this. I suspect they've got an "accessibility" product category. You might want to cc: Henrik Nilsen Omma <henrik at ubuntu dot com>, as he's taking a very active interest currently in Orca.