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  xspeakfree is a Tcl/Tk (wish) frontend to Speak Freely.

For more information about Speak Freely see:

  • http://www.fourmilab.ch/

    For more information about Tcl/Tk see:

  • http://www.scriptics.com/

    I am not the author of either of these packages.

    I recommend version 8.0 of both Tcl and Tk, however there is little reason an older version shouldn't work.

    Requirements:

    	wish (Tcl/Tk), suggested version 8.0p2
    	sfspeaker and sfmike, suggestion version 6.1c
    	mkfifo (your kernel must support fifos)
    	/tmp must be writable by the user using xspeakfree
    
    Downloading:

  • xspeakfree-0.8.2.tar.gz
  • xspeakfree-0.8.1.tar.gz
  • xspeakfree-0.7.tar.gz
    xspeakfree is also available as a NetBSD package, thanks to the efforts of Johnny C. Lam" <lamj@stat.cmu.edu>.. For more information on the package, see: ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/net/xspeakfree/README.html

    Using xspeakfree:

    There is no online help as its very simple and similiar to the Windows version of Speak Freely. If you have a problem using the program, email me and I will try to be of assitance.

    xspeakfree executes a file on startup, its called ".xspeakfree.rc" in your HOME directory. This file is NOT a shell script, its a Tcl script source'd in though the Tcl interpreter.

    To connect to a remote host and send audio, either go to connection and select "New" and type in the host name, or click on their name in the Target Host list with Button-3 (right mouse button) and select "Connect to host". This will cause any current sfmike to exit and a new one to start with the current settings sending audio to the newly selected host. Clicking on an already selected host name is a nop.

    As hosts connect to your sfspeaker, they will be added to the host list automatically. As hosts disconnect, they will not be removed from the list. This is a change from its previous behavior of removing a host from the list after a disconnect.

    Check out the Options menu. It should be self explanatory. If its not, let me know.

    OS Features:

    If you are on an SGI, you will note there is an "Irix" menu on the menubar. Any other OS this should be omitted.

    The only special support for Irix right now is launching the Audio Panel directly from xspeakfree. I'd like to add more support than that, especially for ther OS's.

    If people can send me what options they want for what OS, as well as the output of just "uname" for their OS - or some other method of dertermining from a shell the OS type, as well as how to do the options (ie I have NO CLUE how to control volume on a Sparc Station so you have to tell me) I'll try to add in the support for that OS.

    .xspeakfree.rc file:

    This file is executed right before the window appears, after all defaults have been programmed. This way you can override any default settings, configure your audio hardware, etc.

    In order to execute a shell command, simply prefix the line with a "exec", ie on my SGI my .xspeakfree.rc file has this line in it to configure my input port for the microphone:

    exec apanel -nodisplay -nofork -defaultout AnalogOut2 -device AnalogOut2 -gain 7.5 -rate 8000 -unmute

    This has the effect of running the program apanel with that mess of arguments. =)

    I'm not going to help you with Tcl, go look on the web, there are plenty of online manpages there. But here's a list of the variables you can modify and what effect they will have:

    All defaults for these variables are the normal Speak Freely software defaults. =)

    Speaker(port)default port for sfspeaker to listen on
    Speaker(args:jitter)jitter setting, must be the full commandline value, ie "-J2000" for 2 seconds.
    Speaker(args:disable_remote_ring)set to "-n" to disable remote ring, " " to turn this feature off.
    Speaker(:record:onoff)set to 1 to record audio, 0 to not. default is 0.
    Speaker(:record:file)set to the file path to store recorded audio in. ignored unless Speaker(:record:onoff) is set to 1.
    Speaker(:record:append)set to "+" to append to record files instead of overwriting. set to "" to overwrite.
    Speaker(args:user)additonal arguments for sfspeaker
    Speaker(:crypt:method)set to " " to use none, "-O" for file, "-I" for IDEA, "-K" for DES and "-Z" for PGP pass phrase.
    Speaker(:crypt:-I)IDEA string
    Speaker(:crypt:-K)DES string
    Speaker(:crypt:-Z)PGP pass phrase
    Speaker(:crypt:-O)File path
    Mike(args:simplecompression)set to "-C" to turn on simple compression, set to " " to turn it off. Yes, its off value is a space.
    Mike(args:compression)set to "-N" to turn off all compression, set to the appropiate sfmike argument for that compression setting. ie "-T" will turn on GSM, -LPC10R1 will set up LPC10, one copy. Default is GSM
    Mike(args:protocol)set to " " for Speak Freely protocol, otherwise set to the sfmike argument for the protocl you want.
    Mike(args:user)additional arguments for sfmike, provided just in case.

    To set one of these variables, you can use the following syntax:

    		set  "new value"
    	
    ie:
    		set Mike(args:compression) "-LPC"
    	
    to set the default compression as LPC.

    LWL information is taken from the environment variables:

    SPEAKFREE_LWL_TELLcomma seperated list of hosts
    SPEAKFREE_IDinformation of the format of: "fullname:email:phone:location"

    .xspeakfree.hostlist

    This file is parsed at startup, it is NOT a Tcl file, rather a plain text file containg two types of lines: comments and hostnames. comment lines begin with a '#'. host names look like:

    	hostname	comment
    	
    these hostnames are loaded into the target host list at startup and the comment field is placed in parens next to the name. ie a line like this in .xspeakfree.hostlist:

    	nj5.injersey.com	Shawn Pearce
    	
    becomes:

    	nj5.injersey.com (Shawn Pearce)
    	
    in the host list.

    This file is NOT modified by the program, it is to be modified by the user. Perhaps in the future I will make it modifiable through the program.

    Main Web Site:

  • http://www.spearce.org/projects/xspeakfree/
    Author:

    Shawn Pearce

    Contributors:

    Johnny C. Lam: NetBSD package.
    Ivan Popov: Blowfish support.