mbrola documentation and speech-dispatcher

Carles Pina i Estany <[email protected]> Tue, 16 Dec 2025 08:04:38 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.accessibility
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi,

I am not a user of Orca, but I'm helping some people to set it up. This
is how I ended writing now https://wiki.debian.org/Orca#Orca_voices

I'm still a bit confused how different parts (mbrola, festival server if
in use, speech dispatcher) work together. So I might have done something
wrong when writing that instructions. Feel free to let me know and I'll
test and fix (or fix it yourself).

Also, I have a quick question. In the file
/usr/share/doc/mbrola/README.Debian it says:

"""
To make use of mbrola along espeak in speech-dispatcher, enable the
espeak-mbrola-generic module by uncommenting the corresponding line in
/etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf
"""

But I'm usin mbrola in Orca with that line commented.

Is that still valid (the file is dated from 2009)?

Also, in my experiments, for what I see, to make speech-dispatcher to
use mbrola and new voices I seem to require:

systemctl --user restart speech-dispatcher

Is this the usual way? This confused me for a while while testing in my
system and the VM (until I realised that restarting was enabling mbrola
in Orca and the new voices).

Thank you very much for any information (I will update the Wiki if
needed).

-- 
Carles Pina i Estany
https://carles.pina.cat | [email protected] | [email protected]

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