OS X (Apple)

Hello,
I own a MacBook pro laptop running mac os x 10.5.7 I recently downloaded yasr which is a screen reader program. I want to use yasr at the command line. I have a file which is in my home directory in a folder called downloads the file is called:
yasr-0.6.9.tar
I looked up on google the command to unpack a .tar file:
tar xvf filename.tar
so I figured if I open terminal and navigate to my home folder and then to my downloads folder and run the following command from terminal:
tar xvf yasr-0.6.9.tar
it should unpack the file for me. Does that sound right? I am kind of a unix newbie, and was wondering, I want to be able to run the yasr screen reader from anywhere on my mac. Like if I open terminal I believe it opens to my home directory, I thought it would be nice to either open terminal and after I install yasr which I really don't know how to do, but if I opened terminal and typed in yasr it would run the screen reader program. Or if I opened terminal and went up a directory and typed in yasr at the command prompt would it give me an error message like (I am kind of used to ms-dos) but something like file not found or, bad command or filename. One of my questions is, is there a special place I should unpack the .tar file if I want to be able to use the screen reader anywhere on my directory structure on my mac? Btw I know about VoiceOver but I want to use a doubletalk speech synthesizer I bought a while back. Any help would be appreciated.

What is it that you want to accomplish with yasr?

OS X has built in text to speech.
If you just want to read stdout text in the terminal window, you can pipe any command's stdout to the "say" command.

Text to speech works in most OS X apps by selecting the text you want read (providing it is selectable), then selecting "Services" -> "Speech" -> "Start Speaking Text" from the application's menu (the one named the same as the application you are in).

You can also turn on the Voice Over function for "global" text to speech. You'll find it in System Preferences under "Universal Access".

Back to yasr. What you downloaded was likely the source code. It would need to be untarred and compiled before you could use it. In order to compile it, you need to install the Apple Developer Tools. You can find the Developer Tools on your OS installation media, or you can sign up for a free "web" developer account and download the developer tools from the Apple developer web site.

There is no guaranty that yasr will compile, nor run on OS X.
Another method might be to install fink, or Darwin Ports on your machine. Both fink and Darwin Ports might require installation of the developer tools, but could make the process of adding preexisting ported unix apps somewhat simpler than manually compiling software (at least from a new unix user perspective). You would probably want to check out which, if any, has a port of yasr.

I do have the developer tools installed on my mac. I moved the yasr-0.6.9 file to my home directory I then created a folder called speech and moved the yasr file into that folder. I then switched into the speech folder where the yasr .tar file was located. I unpacked the tar file and it created a folder called yasr-0.6.9 I cd into that folder and ran
./configure
make
sudo make install

after I typed in my password my computer wrote a bunch of files. I was looking into the terminal window and noticed a couple of no's. I don't know if this means some files couldn't be written? There is a yasr executable file but I don't know if it will work? I still have to edit the config file to work with my speech synthesizer, not sure how to do this like where is the config file and how to edit it?

---------- Post updated at 03:58 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:35 AM ----------

Just wondering if anyone know the designation of the USB ports on my computer? I have two USB ports one on the left and one on the right of my computer, a MacBook pro laptop running mac os x 10.5.7. I am trying to edit a configuration file and I need to know the names of the USB ports. In the configuration file they have written 3 different ports and I need to # remark the ports I won't be using and remove the # remark on the port I will be using. Any help?