Port configuration and automatical startup of user speech dispatcher in distributions

[Hynek Hanke]

Hello,

there has recently been some improvements on the
installation of Speech Dispatcher and its integration
with the environment. The ability to run speech-dispatcher
under ordinary users and the spd-conf script which makes
it easy to create user configuration and setup some basic
options is one of them. An effort to make a full python
parser for DotConf files so that Speech Dispatcher could
be fully configured through some nice interface is another
one.

One of the main remaining issues now is the confusion
over where to start Speech Dispatcher, which port to
use and where to set the appropriate SPEECHD_PORT
environment variable.

It can be done manually by the user in .xsession:
    SPEECHD_PORT=6561
    speech-dispatcher
    gnome-session

I'd however like to ask the distribution maintainers
whether there are any ways how to do this automatically
(register a service for automatical startup, set environment
variable).

Perhaps the spd-conf script could be extended to do
this as well or perhaps it can be patched when making
distribution packages if the matter is distribution specific.

The current state when the configuration script just issues
a warning at the end that the user still needs to set SPEECHD_PORT
and somehow start the service himself, is just half a way.

With regards,
Hynek Hanke