unwanted change of Adriane's voice among applications (hdd install knoppix 7.4.2)

Hello!

I have Adriane (Knoppix 7.4.2) installed on HDD (with 0wn). I'm trying to set up a synthetized voice suitable and comfortable for my 87 year old father. Default voice is not clear nor comfortable to him.

I've been researching about some configurations files for sbl, speech-dispatcher and espeak. I was able to succesfully set a "FEMALE2" voice type, slower a bit the speed and make all punctuations be sent to synthesis.

But pitch is higher and speed is faster at Adriane menu, same at bash shell, than when running KARL, or while paging with "less" or when it says "Are you sure?" after hiting any option at the shutdown menu. The latter voice has lower pitch and slower speed, and my father likes it more.

Further more, after exiting KARL, "PunctuationMode" gets undesirably back to "some". That is dots, commas, hyphens, etc, are not stated anymore when screen-reading a whole line.

Where do I have to configure voice settings to apply uniformly for all?

I already tweaked:

### /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf
# These were the original settings
# DefaultPunctuationMode = "none"
# DefaultVoiceType = "MALE1"
# DefaultRate = 0
# DefaultPitch = 0 # I didn't change this one. Showing for referral
DefaultPunctuationMode = "all"
DefaultVoiceType = "FEMALE2"
DefaultRate = -60

### /etc/sbl/profile/default
# spkfrq = 5 # This one was the original setting
spkfrq = 3
# spkspd = 5 # This one was the original setting
spkspd = 3

### /etc/sbl/spk/speechd
voice1=5 # I assumed the female one, was the 5th voice using CapsLock+F10
voice5=1
# Original speeds
# speed1=-40
# speed2=-30
# speed3=-20
# speed4=-10
# speed5=1
# speed6=10
# speed7=20
# speed8=35
# speed9=50
speed1=-60
speed2=-60
speed3=-60
speed4=-60
speed5=-60
speed6=-60
speed7=-60
speed8=-60
speed9=-60
# I didn't touch the frequency settings. Showing for referral
frequency3=-50
frequency5=0

### /etc/adriane/adriane.conf
### /.adriane/adriane.conf
### /home/knoppix/.adriane/adriane.conf
# These were the original settings
# ESPEAK_PITCH = 120
# ESPEAK_SPEED = 150
unset ESPEAK_PITCH
unset ESPEAK_SPEED

### /etc/sbl.conf
# Unchanged

### /etc/sbl/spkfilter/default.en
# Unchanged

### /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/espeak.conf
# Unchanged


A note regards adriane-screanreader script: I checked that this script (re)exec's itself as root. Hence, when it comes to load $HOME/.adriane/adriane.conf (via adriane-common.sh), it gets root's HOME, and not knoppix's. At boot time, this script is launched from knoppix-autoconfig, and root's HOME is '/'. Afterwards, when launched from shell, root's HOME is the usual '/root' . I don't know if this is normal and/or expected behaviour. It seems to me that the user knoppix's Adriane configuration might get 'cloaked' for the screenreader.


I would like to set up voice parameters uniformly among applications, so I might try out different speeds and pitchs until I'll find the most suitable for my father.

Then, I would really like to clearly understand how all these software work together, and how their configuration and data files interact or come to play, in order to make things work and without messing anything.

Thanks in advance for your time and your advice,
Regards,

-- Knoforus