Is there a project that is jovie successor?

[Gustav Degreef]

Hi Simion,

Thanks for your input and effort.   I carefuly looked over everything 
you mentioned, including the script but it has taken me a long time.   I 
only have a rudimentary  knowledge of scripts.    So modifying or 
writing scripts is beyond my current possibility, especially with my 
vision problems.   But it really helped me to look everything over.   I 
decided the best way was to go back to trying to install it from the 
opensuse repos.   I had failed the first time and created a great 
confusion in my setup. But it was a spare "test" setup on a separate 
partition.   I spent a lot of time cleaning up the repos, updating and 
cleaning up. And now Jovie works on opensuse 15.3!   The packages come 
from unofficial repos, but someone else with the tech knowhow has put it 
together.   I am "forced" to upgrade soon, since the opensuse 15.2 EOL 
is soon.   But now I can move forward hopefully for another 1.5 years, 
the life of 15.3 until a better solution comes.   I hope you or someone 
else can help come up with a replacement for Jovie.   Thanks for your 
efforts.   Gustav.
p.s. I'm posting back on the list in case it may help someone else.

On 9/13/21 1:13 AM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
> On 8/30/21 7:15 PM, Simion wrote:
>> Hi Gustav,
>> I personally would try to compile it, if I am unable I would try 
>> first a simple bash script, the issue with next script is that is not 
>> queuing  the tasks so you can get 2 speakers at the same time 
>> or you can edit the script to "killall" previous taks (so an 
>> application that runs in background would be needed to improve the 
>> experience)
>>
>> #! /bin/bash
>>
>> xclip -out -selection primary | xclip -in -selection clipboard
>> xsel --clipboard | tr "\n" " " | espeak
>> #end script
>>
>> or maybe python or nodejs
>> I am tempted to write something to do some cleanup on the input,
>> like when I want to read an entire reddit page of omments would be 
>> nice if I could  clean it up  first and remove all 
>> the "reply/report ..." buttons labels
>> The reason I decided that in future I would use espeak is because in 
>> my current configuration jovie uses speech dispatcher and speech 
>> dispatcher uses espeak , Qt5 is a new extra layer so a new placed 
>> that could cause problems (but yes Qt5 would be nice to have if you 
>> plant to write a cross operating system desktop application).
>>
>> I have no plans to upgrade from my system soon,  maybe when I 
>> will upgrade my computer or I am forced to upgrade.
>>
>>
>> You probably need to install and configure espeak, the language and 
>> speed, you can have a key bind to  run the script, you can 
>> modify the script to  add something like "killall espeak" to 
>> stop the previous
>>
>> Sorry I can't help more.
>>
>> Regards, Simion
>
>
> Hi Simion,
>
> Thanks for taking the time and for your effort.
>
>
>>
>>
>> On 8/28/21 11:42 PM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>>> Hi Simion,
>>>
>>> Thanks for your detailed reply.  I use opensuse leap 15.2 
>>> with KDE plasma 5.18.6, Qt 5.12.7.   Jovie continues to work 
>>> fine even though it has been deprecated.  However, it no 
>>> longer works on opensuse 15.3 and 15.2 end of life is in December 
>>> this year. Someone has built packages for Jovie on the Open Build 
>>> Service of Suse, but I could not get it to install properly, I think 
>>> it's due to the Qt changes, I got a dependency mess.
>>>
>>> I have been trying to find a replacement for Jovie for 3 years at 
>>> least, since it was clear it would no longer be maintained.  
>>> Read Aloud is a plugin for Firefox that fills all the browser needs. 
>>> Thunderbird also has a Read Aloud plugin, but it only works for 
>>> single emails and top posted replies, list messages, etc.  
>>> It reads only from top to bottom without being able to select only 
>>> parts of the mail.  LibreOffice has a text to speech plugin 
>>> that even reads the clipboard contents, but it is 
>>> cumbersome.  Okular has a nice TTS function, but it often 
>>> starts two different simultaneous but voices of the same text which 
>>> can't be understood.  Sometimes id functions fine.  
>>> That is where I use TTS the most, and periodically to read out error 
>>> messages, text boxes etc (for which Jovie is indispensable and for 
>>> which I don't have an adequate substitute).
>>>
>>> Any suggestions?  Perhaps to compile Jovie from a tar 
>>> binary?  Or are you seriously thinking of building a 
>>> replacement for Jovie? Thanks, Gustav.
>>>
>>> On 8/26/21 12:01 PM, Simion wrote:
>>>> Hi, no problem ,
>>>>
>>>> btw my name is Simion no Simon, don't worry it is OK just want to 
>>>> mention it to prevent issues like typos in emails
>>>>
>>>> I still use Jovie, from my fork with a few crash fixes
>>>> I have some scripts that I use directly espeak .
>>>>
>>>> I was not yet forced to give up on Jovie but my conclussion was to 
>>>> not use Qt if I have to write my own replacement,
>>>>
>>>> since I would not need some crossplatform solution I could probably 
>>>> make a python application , or even something that runs in the 
>>>> browser  or nodejs.
>>>>
>>>> But for now on my distro I can still compile jovie , I have a 
>>>> keyboard with multipmedia keys so my workflow is to copy paste 
>>>> stuff in clipboard and using my keys I can play/pause/resume. I 
>>>> still use espeak as backend with voice speed set to max.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 8/26/21 12:37 PM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>>>>> Hello Simon,
>>>>>
>>>>> I saw your old message on the accessibility 
>>>>> list.  I also have 
>>>>> serious eye problems, though I am not 
>>>>> blind.  I have been 
>>>>> using Jovie for most of my computer time for years and I am trying 
>>>>> to find a replacement for 
>>>>> it.  In my situation a 
>>>>> screen reader is not 
>>>>> suitable. Excuse me for 
>>>>> writing you directly.  
>>>>> Can I ask you more about this 
>>>>> issue?  Gustav
>>>>>
>>>>> On 5/12/18 10:18 AM, Simion wrote:
>>>>>> Hello, So I know that jovie is not be ported to KDE5 and that the 
>>>>>> idea is to use QtSpeech, I can't find if someone started a 
>>>>>> replacement for jovie that uses QtSpeech yet.
>>>>>> I plan to investigate QtSpeech and see if it works properly on 
>>>>>> Linux, if there is no such a project started is there any 
>>>>>> interest in it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>