[Xastir] Festival issue Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit options greyed out

[Lee Bengston]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 6:49 PM, Chris <kc2rgw at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I did build it, thanks to whomever did that build script and
> instructions on the wiki, nice job there.
>
> The mystery is solved, now it works...*however*
>
> Festival can't keep up with the onslaught of 'new objects' and it gets
> all jammed up and trips into the ==Pause== mode and hangs up.  Not
> Xastir's fault there for sure, likely all the device control delays
> due to the layers of audio system with pulseaudio running.

The fact that you got back so fast saying that you built it really
points out what a time saver the build script is.  I did the most
recent couple of tweaks to the script, but another contributor did the
heavy lifting on that one.

It's also possible to get sound by playing the sound files.  In the
past I have installed the sox package from the repo, which uses the
"play" command that is already entered into the "Audio Play Command"
field under File - Configure - Audio Alarms in Xastir.  I hadn't tried
that in a long time, though, and when I tried it just now, it would
not work.  The sox program seems to be trying to play the file, but it
freezes.

So I fell back to something I did even longer ago when I couldn't find
a command line program right away to play wav files, but I did find
one that played mp3's.  I still have the Xastir wav files converted to
mp3 format posted at www.175moonlight.com/xastir/mp3/xastirmp3.tar.
First install mpg321 via apt-get or synaptic.  Download and copy the
MP3's into /usr/local/share/xastir/sounds.  Then under
File-configure-audio alarms change the 'Audo Play Command' field to
mpg321, and change the sound file extensions from .wav to .mp3.  Then
Xastir should play the files.  It won't sound as nice as Festival, but
it should be lighter weight and possibly keep up with the data stream.
 If you really get ambitious you can record your own mp3's  :-)

If you prefer to stick with the original wav files and use a command
line app to play those, the wav's are available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xastir/files/xastir-miscellaneous/General/.
 Just make sure the command for playing is entered in the applicable
field in the audio alarms area.

Regards,
Lee - K5DAT