[Xastir] Linux Newbie Needs Help

[Tom Russo]

On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 10:53:58AM -0400, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <rtg at aapsc.com> flavor, containing:
> On Sat, 9 May 2009, Phil - w2lie wrote:
> 
> > Also I tired to make a small script on my desktop that would launch 
> > 'festival_server &' and then XASTIR.
> > I used the editor to create the file, and then tried to make it an executable 
> > file..but when i click it, it seems to always want to open the editor..

> I suspect you used a 'word processor' instead of a 'text editor'. I like 
> 'pico' (aka 'nano'), and I suggest that you also make yourself familiar 
> with 'vi'. Eventually you'll find yourself in a situation where that is 
> the only editor available.  Make sure the file is saved as plain ascii 
> text without any extension.  In addition to making the file executable, 
> you need to either place it in a directory that is included in your search 
> path, or invole it from the command line with a fully-explicit pathname.

Another thing you might check is that you have the right "magic number" at the
top of the script to tell the world what to do with it, e.g.:

  #!/bin/sh

This is one of those things that is second nature once you've got a few scripts
under your belt, but that is easily forgotten when learning *nix.

If you don't have that, perhaps the desktop environment doesn't know what to
do with it when you double click it, even though it's executable.  Can you
run the script from the command line?  

As for the second attempt to run your script getting a "failed to bind" error,
that's probably because the first festival server you started up is still
running.  You can only have one running at a time, so starting it up every
time you start xastir will fail to start festival every time but the first
time --- and you don't need to do so anyway since Festival keeps running until 
you kill it.  What you'll want your script to do is to check to see if 
festival is running, then start it if it isn't.  That'll get you an xastir 
that can always use speech, without unnecessary attempts to start multiple 
festival servers. 

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
  In some cultures what I do would be considered normal. 
                                  -- Ineffective daily affirmation