Re: [orca-list] Punctuation, capital letters, exchange of characters and strings, generally error in the design of Orca

[Jan Buchal <buchal brailcom org>]

> > > > > "WW" == Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM> writes:

    WW> Hi Jan: Based upon recent conversations, my current
    WW> understanding of speech dispatcher is that it merely passes text
    WW> on to the speech engine with some additional engine-specific
    WW> markup if the engine supported it.
    >> Yes.

    WW> OK - so, no additional processing of the text is done. It is
    WW> just dispatched.
Right.

    WW> My argument is that a user wants a feature and they don't care
    WW> how it is delivered. They just want it to work.
    >> Mr. Zamazal has already answered. Apart from this we have
    >> implemented this functionality in Festival through Festival
    >> Freebsoft Utils and in cooperation with Jonathan Duddington we
    >> have achieved that it is implemented in Espeak as well.

    WW> OK - so some negotiation and work is required from the speech
    WW> engine provider.
Sure.

    >> IBM TTS module in SD emulates much of this functionality and if
    >> there is need it is possible to find a solution for other speech
    >> engines as well.

    WW> Here's where I get confused. 'Emulates' implies to me that some
    WW> processing is done in SD if the engine doesn't support it.
No.


    WW> So, doesn't this mean that SD is not just a dispatcher, but it
    WW> also contains code to provide support for features missing in a
    WW> speech engine?
In current SD implementation  the emulation can be in its output module.
The new python implementation is split into two parts:

1. Message dispatching
2. TTS API Provider



    WW> I agree. Let's focus on the user requirements proposed in
    WW> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2008-March/msg00566.html
    WW> and discuss how we can deliver these requirements when also
    WW> dealing with speech engines that do not have direct support for
    WW> them.
    >> This discussion has already taken place. You can see the results
    >> on http://www.freebsoft.org/tts-api . As Mr. Hanke wrote in a
    >> previous email it is nothing closed and we welcome any
    >> suggestions and improvements. I don't see any meaning in starting
    >> from the very begin again.

    WW> I'm definitely not suggesting we start from the beginning again.
    WW> The total number of TTS API's in the world is approaching the
    WW> total number of people in China.
OK, but our main goal is to have very good Free Software TTS. How much
Free Software TTS exist?

    WW> What I'm hearing from you is a proposal that TTSAPI is the
    WW> solution to look at, and that it can be changed to accommodate
    WW> requirements from
    WW> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2008-March/msg00566.html
    WW> that might be missing. If that is the case, then a constructive
    WW> way to move forward would be to map the requirements from
    WW> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2008-March/msg00566.html
    WW> to TTSAPI calls.
Quick look into TTS API documentation says that these capabilities are supported.

    WW> In addition, I'd also like to hear more about the current state
    WW> of TTSAPI. How complete is the implementation, where does it
    WW> work, who is using it, etc.
Mr. Hanke and Mr. Zamazal will write more information.


-- 

Jan Buchal
Tel: (00420) 24 24 86 008
Mob: (00420) 608023021