Version: (using KDE KDE 3.4.0) Installed from: Gentoo Packages OS: Linux As always more Gentoo users disable arts in kde and therefore do not need arts support it would be nice to make the arts output method optional. This would minimize the needed requirements for installing KTTSD in Gentoo.
aRts is still the official multimedia framework for KDE. When a new one is decided upon and implemented, will reconsider.
Kttsd does not really depend on arts, it's just the configure script that disables kttsd if no arts is present, i'll attach a patch to compile wihtout arts.
Created attachment 10170 [details] kdeaccessibility-noarts.patch
KTTS will output using one of two methods, aRts or GStreamer. The requirement for aRts cannot be removed because: 1. GStreamer does not function well. Long delay when told to stop. 2. There is no reliable way to ensure user has the minimim version of GStreamer library and plugins, including wav plugin. If user does not have mimimum versions, GStreamer behaves very badly or crashes taking KTTS with it. 3. GStreamer support is inadequate in the KDE environment. There are very few KDE developers who can answer technical questions, and nothing they can do about problems that are found, other than to report them to the bugs.gnome.org. Furthermore, when users report problems with KTTS that are really GStreamer problems, there is no way to delegate the bug to GStreamer. The best I can do is close the bug and advise user to seek help elsewhere. The GStreamer alternative for KTTS is offered for those who wish to use it, but for these and other reasons, I cannot rely on it. Frankly, I have considered removing it altogether from KTTS because of the numerous problems reported. I want to work on text-to-speech enhancements for KDE; not multimedia problems. Since aRts is the only reliable choice, it must remain a dependency for now. As I stated above, when the KDE libraries have a well-implemented and supported alternative, will consider removing the requirement for aRts.
I have committed patches to HEAD so that KTTS can now be built --without-arts option. Since the ALSA audio plugin is a good alternative and widely available, it is now built by default.
Re-open in order to resolve FIXED.
*** Bug has been marked as fixed ***.