[Tts-project] Speech feedback related packages

[Igor B. Poretsky]

Hello Samuel,

Very much thanks for such detailed review and very useful and
comprehensive hints. I've addressed hopefully all the issues listed and
uploaded the updates.

>>>>> "Samuel" == Samuel Thibault <sthibault at debian.org> writes:

    Samuel> Hello, Here rather keeping the pkg-a11y-devel list in Cc,
    Samuel> where Debian maintainers are, and not users :)

So, should I announce there as well now?

    >> So, these are:

    Samuel> These don't seem to have a git repository? It would make it
    Samuel> way easier to maintain that you put them on salsa, you can
    Samuel> create yourself an account and I can give you access to the
    Samuel> tts-team group.

Actually, all my projects live on Github
(https://github.com/poretsky). Does it matter to mirror these ones on
Salsa nevertheless?

    >> multispeech -- Multilingual speech server for Emacspeak
    >> (https://mentors.debian.net/package/multispeech/)

    Samuel> Please mention in debian/control the upstream URL, using the
    Samuel> Homepage field in debian/control. And also use Vcs-Browser
    Samuel> and Vcs-Git to designate the debian branch.

Done.

    Samuel> You'll want a sid branch that contains the current
    Samuel> unstable/testing version.

At the moment I use master branch for Debian package and upstream branch
for upstream source. It is the default in git-buildpackage. Should I
change repository layout?

    Samuel> The libmultispeech5 package should have Section: libs

Done.

    Samuel> The multispeech packages recommend espeak and espeak-data,
    Samuel> that should really be espeak-ng and espeak-ng-data, since
    Samuel> the original espeak is unmaintained.

Done.

    Samuel> debian/sd-multispeech.postinst:

    Samuel>         . /etc/default/speech-dispatcher if [ "x$RUN" !=
    Samuel> "xyes" ] ; then kill $SPD

    Samuel> This seems dangerous to kill speech dispatcher like
    Samuel> this. Some people may rely on it running to get computer
    Samuel> access. It is already a bit odd for the sd-multispeech
    Samuel> package to restart speechd (but I understand why), but
    Samuel> killing without restarting seems like a no-go to me.

Yes, I dislike it too, even though Orca, for instance, just respawn it
automatically and nothing criminal happens in fact. But, as I see, the
autospawn functionality can be disabled in configuration. Thus, I've
specified SIGHUP signal in the kill command, that forces Speech
Dispatcher to reread its configuration and, therefore, update the
available modules list. Hope, it would be correct.

    >> freespeech -- English text preprocessor for Mbrola TTS
    >> (https://mentors.debian.net/package/freespeech/)

    Samuel> Similarly, please add upstream URL and packaging URLs.

Done.

    Samuel> Actually, is there still an upstream for this? If not, you
    Samuel> probably want to re-create one, and apply your patches in
    Samuel> it. We don't want to make debian the only owner of these
    Samuel> patches, and rather see this go out in the wild so people
    Samuel> can include it into other distributions and contribute
    Samuel> patches as well.

Upstream source exists, but it is not mine. I found it at
http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola/tts/English/fs.a10m.tar.gz some
time ago. I don't know whether it can be downloaded there now or found
at some other place. I did not succeed to find an alternative
location. The code is distributed under GPL license, so, I think that I
use it legally. I treat it as an original upstream source, so, it is
placed in the upstream branch of my repository. Of course, I can commit
all my patches to this branch. Should I do it? The only thing that keeps
me from doing it is that I cannot get the original author agreement.

    >> ru-tts -- Extremely compact and portable software Russian TTS
    >> engine (https://mentors.debian.net/package/ru-tts/)

    Samuel> Similarly, please add upstream URL and packaging URLs.

Done.

    Samuel> debian/librutts-dev.install: we don't want to install .la
    Samuel> files.

Done.

    Samuel> debian/rules: it seems to me you can rewrite it something
    Samuel> like a mere:

Done. Thank you very much for so concrete hint.

    >> rulex -- Pronunciation dictionary for Russian TTS engine
    >> (https://mentors.debian.net/package/rulex/)

    Samuel> Similarly, please add upstream URL and packaging URLs.

Done.

    Samuel> debian/librulexdb-dev.install: we don't want to install .la
    Samuel> files.

Done.

    Samuel> debian/rules: Similarly, you can probably rewrite using just
    Samuel> a few override_* rules (note that there are
    Samuel> override_dh_auto_build-arch, override_dh_auto_build-indep,
    Samuel> override_dh_auto_install-indep, and
    Samuel> override_dh_auto_install-arch targets)

Done.

    Samuel> Also, in general you'd want to push the manual pages to
    Samuel> upstream rather than keeping them in debian/

There were no manual pages in the original freespeech source. I've made
them especially for the Debian package consistency. And for ru-tts
package, I think that manual pages are not essential for its upstream
sources since it is sufficiently documented by README files.

Best regards,
Igor.