Re: [orca-list] IBMTTS and slackware

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello,
Its this sort of problem you describe which puts me off the idea of
getting IBMTTS. Did you try TTSynth on ubuntu gutsy, I thought it was
meant to be fine there (unfortunately you would be using an old version
of ubuntu). I thought also people had got it working by installing the
compatibility library from a previous version of ubuntu and installing
that on hardy. Otherwise I would point you at voxin, they say it works
on ubuntu (and they say they provide that library), but if you have had
such problems with TTSynth I can understand why you wouldn't want to
spend more money on this. It would be good if there was a trial version
so that one could check compatibility before paying out.

As for other synthesisers, I find espeak good, but I feel I am not using
it as fast as I use eloquence. The reasons for some of us liking espeak
might be (all apply to me):
Those of us using Linux before espeak came on to the scene had to use
things like festival or flite, so espeak is quite a step forward for a
free synth.
The author of espeak has done a lot to make it even better for use with
screen readers (some of it being more technical than output quality, eg.
making it a shared library so that a specific speech-dispatcher driver
can be made, supporting some ssml tags so that it can be control better
in a stream of text, etc).
A more personal preference is that espeak originally was developed with
a British voice, and as I live in England this is nice to me. I know
that those in the US may not like it so much as I understand it there
isn't a true US voice in espeak, just one made to sound a bit more
american.

I agree that neither festival or flite are suitable, either I don't like
the voice (the standard diphone voices) or it is far to unresponsive
(the arctic multisyn voices in festival in particular, but I would say
that flite and festival are quite heavy on the system anyway regardless
of the voice).

Michael Whapples
On Sun, 2008-06-01 at 15:47 -0400, Chris Gilland: Desktop wrote:
> Michael, I tried getting TT-Sunth working on Ubuntu.  Trust me, I only got 
> it to work once and don't know ho the hell I did it.  Trust me dude, it's 
> not worth it.  that's why I no longer am a linux user.  The speech just 
> isn't bvery good, I hate Festival, and I cannot stand! ESpeak, and frankly, 
> I dono what the people who made it and say it sounds good were smoakin. 
> It's very flangy, and just God aweful in my opinino.  I've bought TT-Sunth. 
> Now frankly, if anyone using Hartsy can get this thing speaking, ya know 
> what I'll personally do?  I'll send you my copy to try it with, frankly, and 
> if it works for you, I'll then even hell, give you the money on PayPal to 
> buy your own license of the thing and remove my copy, that is, assuming you 
> can get it working on my system.  Again, that's the deeal, getting it 
> working on your system's only half of it, you then gotyta get it to work on 
> my Hartsy machine.  I even bought Capstral David and can't get the stupid 
> thing to work.  I have tried both voices in both gnome speech and speech 
> dispatcher and they just will not show up in the list of synths.  O, sure, 
> they install fine, they register fine, but, they won't show up, period.  I 
> don't care what libraries I get.  Someone said I needed something called 
> IBM-gnome-speech or something, but that it wasn't in the apt repositories. 
> So, where can I go to get it, and is there anyone who can take over my case 
> here and help me with this till we get it running?  Again, I'll pay you the 
> $40 for the synth, but, only if we can get it working.  I don't have time to 
> deal with this any longer and people saying well, yeah, I will help you, but 
> it's gonna be tough or what not, I know that.  This is why I have said, I 
> want help from soneone who darn well knows! they can make it work, 
> regardless what we gotta do.  I'm sorry but the only way I'm going back to 
> Linux is if we can get TT-Syunth or Capstral, preferably TT-Synth, Reed, 
> Adult male1 to work.  I promise that I will not! bother the list again after 
> it';s working.  I just can't use an OS if it has speech I cannot audibly 
> understand.  I respect 90 percent of you like ESpeak, and about half of that 
> 90 percent literally swear by it, but, I'm sorry, gag me with a spoon! 
> Unless I can either get donated an old braille display, or can get a good 
> sounding synth like Eloquence, I will not! be going back to any distro of 
> Linux.  I'd even be willing to do another distro from Ubuntu, assuming we 
> could get gnome working and get Orca working with TT-Synth.  Otherwise, I am 
> sorry, but, I won't have it.
> 
> Chris.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples aim com>
> To: <orca-list gnome org>
> Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 3:36 PM
> Subject: [orca-list] IBMTTS and slackware
> 
> 
> 
> > Hello,
> > I know this has come up before, but I can't remember any actual final
> > conclusion.
> >
> > Whilst I thought espeak was fast enough, I found I had to use a windows
> > machine last week, and it reminded me how I do actually use eloquence in
> > windows faster than I have espeak. This has got me thinking whether I
> > should get IBMTTS for linux, but I have a few questions.
> >
> > I know that IBMTTS requires an old compatibility library, which I am
> > unsure is provided in slackware. So how could I go about trying to get
> > this library? Does anyone know of a suitable slackware package for it?
> > If not how might I go about providing this myself from source (I had a
> > look around for the source code I might need, but all libstdc++ seems to
> > have numbers such as 6.0.x etc much highrt than what the TTSynth site
> > suggests, 2.9.6 or 2.9.5). Could it be possible to use a package from a
> > different distribution, eg. I remember back in the days when I used
> > trplayer, I could use rpm2tgz to convert the realplayer 8 package into a
> > slackware package and it worked fine, but I suspect that for libstdc++
> > compatibility libraries things may not be so simple.
> >
> > This brings me on to another question, whether to use voxin or ttsynth?
> > The ttsynth website says there won't be any support provided, so I guess
> > this means if I buy ttsynth and can't get it working then I am on my own
> > and may have wasted money on it. Might things be better with voxin,
> > their website says that voxin includes the libstdc++ compatibility
> > library (I guess for debian or ubuntu as those are the distros
> > mentioned).
> >
> > Alternatively I am wondering whether it would be best save the money and
> > stick with espeak as it is good and works, where as ibmtts sounds like I
> > may hit all sorts of compatibility issues and potentially have no
> > support from the seller.
> >
> > Michael Whapples
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca 
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> 
>