Does anyone know of an example of speakup working through a serial port on Slackware 14.1? If so what brand and model of synthesizer was used and was any special configuration or software needed to get the external synthesizer to function with speakup?

The remainder of this thread is what I've found so far ...

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I've recently become interested in speakup on Slackware after assisting with this post from last weekend. That LQ member is trying to get Slackware installed using a LiteTalk synthesizer. A quote from that post ...
I've been trying to find an example of speakup working through the serial port on a recent version of Slackware but have been unsuccessful so far.

This LQ thread from last year didn't appear to result in success. The LQ member was using a DECtalk Express synthesizer.

Of course these two LQ thread examples do NOT demonstrate that speakup doesn't work, as we all see posts here everyday where the software functions properly but the LQ member just needs some assistance in getting the software to work. But on the other hand it would be good to see a working example, otherwise maybe speakup through a serial port really doesn't work these days.

The Speakup Project Website hasn't had much activity since 2010 except for the posting of mailing list archives up through March of this year. It looks like speakup version 3.1.6 from 2010 may have been the version that went into the kernel.

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I found this email exchange of about a dozen messages from 2012 regarding a bug report. There was 2013 email thread with some additional comments regarding the bug report here and here.

I believe the patch that John Heim was referring to was here.

One excerpt of that email thread reads ...
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I found installing Slackware64 14.1 with the subsequent installation of portaudio, espeak, and espeakup straightforward. The combination worked as expected with the espeak software synthesizer.

Does anyone know if brltty can be built into the kernel so it will begin working just after the the boot: prompt (like speakup used to work?). Or is brltty only available after the kernel is running? I'm just wondering if the technique brltty used with the serial port would apply to the rewriting of the speakup driver.

I currently have no hardware synthesizer. In fact I don't currently have a spare motherboard with a serial port header available. Now I wish I would have kept a couple of my older computers with serial ports, or I still had access to portable serial data analyzers. If someone can verify that hardware speakup still works then I will acquire a couple of old motherbords with serial ports and a used synthesizer if I can find an inexpensive one.

The PV note in SPEAKUP_INSTALL.TXT discussing utf8, gpm and serial port numbers appeared intended to be helpful and encouraging, but the sentence "Anyways, good luck with the install!" seemed somewhat lacking in confidence that speakup would always work.

If it turns out that speakup no longer works on external hardware then maybe there isn't much to be done unless/until the speakup hardware driver is rewritten to work in current kernels. If it does currently work with the serial port please point me to a working example.

Thanks.

brltty neither can nor need to be built into the kernel. It can run even _before_ the boot prompt, in fact just after the devices have been created.

For your information I just provided build material for the most recent version brltty-6.2, Cf. this post.

I did that to make brltty available in the Slint installers. That works (I will release these new installers next week), and has been tested by a user. He uses a model of terminal connected through USB but there are of course devices directly connected to serial lines, though machines with equipped of a serial lines are increasingly scarce, I think.

I now intent to ship speakup in a Slint installer as well and on the occasion propose updates of relevant stuff in Slackware. I'm pretty confident that can be done as it's already done in several distributions, among which Debian. I will be more than happy to cooperate with you on that topic.

@Didier Spaier - Thanks for the response. You wrote ...
This is encouraging. You mentioned a tester with a Braille tty connected through a USB device. If a Braille tty or external synthesizer can be working at the boot: prompt through a USB device then it should be possible to install a system from scratch just using the Braille tty or synthesizer (and keyboard of course).

Thanks for the offer to cooperate with me. I'm not sure exactly what I plan to do. In poking around this week it appeared that the speakup software may be neglected and perhaps it could be an area I could learn and help with in Slackware. I'm not sure my limited skills are up to the (yet undefined) task however. I'll continue exploring and learning more about the Slackware boot process.

I'll look at your SLINT project to learn from it. If I get more serious about this I'll find a more appropriate method to communicate with you Didier than posts on this forum.

December and January are the busiest months of the year for me so I didn't pick the best week to develop a new interest.

Well, the Braille terminal is not yet usable in the installer when the greeting screen is displayed. But the user just needs to type after boot:For instance, when he heard the bell ring, Philippe just typed on his regular keyboard:06 => Installation in French
pm => Terminal Papenmeier
usb: =>First USB device matching the braille driver
fr_FR => French (France) text table

After that and creation of udev devices in rc.S, all information displayed on the console's screen are also sent to the Braille terminal, so the keyboard is no more needed.

They are remaining issues, mostly the highlighting of a dialog's menu entry is not shown on the terminal, but it's another topic and I am trying to address that.

You can communicate with me through email: <my first name> (at) <domain name>

PS After installation brltty will be started at boot with the parameters used in the installers' command line, that can of course be changed afterwards editing the config file /etc/brltty.conf or just running the script /usr/sbin/bp2cf.