These are the Speakup installation instructions for Speakup 2.0, as
modified by Gene Collins, on Thu Apr 14 16:06:22 2005.
This document assumes you have had some experience with kernel
compilation and installation. If you have not, I recommend you get the
kernel source and read the README and various documents in the
linux/Documentation directory. In particular you need to read the
Changes file to make sure you have the appropriate utilities needed for
installing a 2.4.xx or 2.6.xx kernel. It isn't as difficult as you might
think. The kernel README is intimidating the first time but once you
get the steps down, it's really pretty easy. Getting through the "make
config" is the tedious bit.
Kernel versions supported are 2.4.26 or later, and 2.6.10 or later, as
of Thu Apr 14 15:31:00 2005.
The first thing to do is to place a copy of the tarball in the /usr/src
directory which is the directory the linux tree is located in as well.
Your kernel tree must be located in /usr/src/linux for this installation
to work. So if your kernel tree is not in /usr/src/linux, make a linux
symlink in /usr/src to the actual location of your kernel source tree.
Next untar and install speakup by typing:
tar zxf speakup-2.00.tar.gz
cd speakup-2.00
./install
Note the dot-slash before the install. This will copy the speakup
directory to the kernel tree and apply the various patches and
components to the appropriate kernel files. Depending on how
experienced you are with kernel compiling and hacking will determine
whether you should bother looking at any failed patches. If this
happens, you should probably write to the speakup mailing list for
help or myself.
If all of the patch hunks apply successfully then just continue with
the standard steps to compile the kernel with:
make mrproper
make config
Note: if you are compiling under a 2.6 tree, you should run the
make mrproper command under the /usr/src/linux-2.6.xx directory, before
you run the ./install command in the speakup-2.0 directory.
When you get to the section console speech output, answer 'y' to the
CONFIG_SPEAKUP prompt. You will be given a submenu with the list of
synthesizers which are currently supported. You can include as many
synths in the kernel as you wish but remember each one takes up kernel
space. You can only choose one of the synths as the default or none, so
just type dtlk or whatever is the correct string for the synthesizer you
have. If you choose none as your default synthesizer, then you will
need to type a parameter at boot time, such as:
linux speakup_synth=<keyword>
Where the keyword is one of the keys in the list of supported
synthesizers. See the Speakup User's Guide in the file
/usr/src/speakup-2.0/spkguide.txt for more details.
We have placed the speakup configuration options in make config just
after the vga console choice. For the DoubleTalk PC driver included
by Jim Van Zandt, I recommend you say no to that option. I have not
tried configuring them both in, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if
it didn't work.
For the 2.6 tree, the Speakup configuration options are under the
Speakup Console Speech choice just below the graphics support choice.
If all goes well up to this point you can continue with the compiling
process by doing:
make dep >dep.file 2>&1 &
make bzImage >cc.file 2>&1 &
make modules >mod.file 2>&1 &
I always redirect output to the files dep.file and cc.file so I can
look over the compilation record to make sure there are no errors and
warnings.
For the 2.6.xx kernels, you only have to type:
make >cc.file 2>&1 &
For both 2.4.xx and 2.6.xx, if you are using the bash shell, you can
type:
set -b
before running the make command. This will automatically notify you
when the job completes with a "done" message. If you get an "exit"
message, then the compile didn't complete properly, and you should look
at the cc.file for errors.
Okay, you are ready to install the newly compiled kernel. Make sure
you make an linux.old entry in your lilo.conf file so you can recover
if it blows up. Next as root run "make modules_install" to install
whatever modules you compiled and move the bzImage from
/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot to wherever your kernel lives. Also
move the System.map from /usr/src/linux to where your System.map
lives. On our systems we use debian so we create a vmlinuz-speakup
and System.map-speakup in our /boot directory and set the symbolic
links vmlinuz and System.map in the root (/) directory to point to the
images. Now type lilo to tell lilo to build the new booter file and
install it.
If you are running Debian, you can su to root and run "make install" and
"make modules_install" while you are in the /usr/src/linux directory.
This will automatically install the kernel and run lilo for you.
However, if you are running the grub boot loader, you will need to edit
your grub file to point at the new image, then run grub manually.
In Speakup 2.0, the Speakup key map is automatically loaded when Speakup
is initialized. This will happen regardless of what other keymap you
have loaded. This means you will not have the problem of Speakup keys
being overwritten by another map, as happened in older versions of Speakup.
If everything has gone OK up until now, cross your fingers and type:
shutdown -r now
Your system should start talking to you as soon as it starts booting.
It will talk and talk and ... well, you might want to hit the
keypad-enter key to tell it to shut up. You should also read the
Speakup User's Guide in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/speakup/spkguide.txt for information about
the various Speakup key assignments and what they do.
As of v-0.10 the speakup configuration options are in the
/proc/speakup subtree. The individual options should be fairly
obvious by their names such as rate, volume, punc_level, and so forth.
You can manipulate them by cat'ing or echoing new values to them such
as:
echo 9 >/proc/speakup/rate
You can see what the current values are by cat'ing those files to the console:
cat /proc/speakup/rate
Again, the Speakup User's Guide, mentioned above, contains an entire
section on the /proc/speakup system.
I have probably managed to overlook a whole whack of things because
this is the, enter version number here, draft. Don't worry, we'll get
it right eventually. If you like the package, you really should get on
the mailing list and start participating in its development.
The Speakup web site is:
http://linux-speakup.org/
Note: If you plan to use either the DECPC card or a software
synthesizer, see the README file and the subdirectories in
/usr/src/speakup-2.0/utils directory.
Kirk
email: kirk@braille.uwo.ca
phone: (519) 679-6845 (home)