[BRLTTY] Hints for "modern" audio setup?

[Mario Lang]

Hi.

I switched to a new workstation at work.  This machine apparently has no
working PC beeper anymore.  While it appears in ALSA mixer, I can't get
it to produce any sound, neither via plain console, nor via BRLTTY
beeper output (and yes, the kernel module (forgot name) is loaded.)

So I am looking for alternative ways to get BRLTTY to produce audible
sounds again.  The obvious route would be via PCM, however, on this
machine, I am using X11 setup as well, which needs working audio for
speech synthesis and occasional sound playback.  As far as I understand,
the most reliable way to keep working audio in X11 is to bite the bullet
and use PulseAudio as that is what it wants to use by default.
As far as I understand, PulseAudio is launched as part of the X11
session, not as a normal daemon by default.  This apparently leads to
the situation that I can play audio from the console if I am logged in
with the same user as I am logged in with X11, however, I can not play
audio via PulseAudio as root.  Additionally, PulseAudio seems to take
the soundcard exclusively, so I can not play audio via plain ALSA
either.  Now, this isn't as bad as it sounds, since I probably shouldn't
do too many things as root anyway.  So dropping back to a user console
and playing audio files there is actually a good habit to pick up.
However, there is the problem that BRLTTY runs as root, and doesn't have
PulseAudio output support right now.

I am wondering what to do about this situation.  As a prerequisite, I'd
like to avoid custom configuration as much as possible.  Not because I
am lazy.  I can configure a Linux desktop all day long if I really need
to.  However, I can see that this might be an issue for other people in
the future as well, so I am looking for a solution that works without
forcing the user to do too much custom configuration on their part.

My forward-looking idea would be: Why not add PulseAudio support to
BRLTTY, and enhance it with the capability of dropping to another user?
This sounds quite involved code-wise, so I wonder if there is any other
quick fix that would satisfy the above criteria of being non-invasive?

-- 
CYa,
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