Re: [g-a-devel] gnome-speech and proprietory software synthesizers.

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Hi Luke:

The current architecture was designed to allow this (preparation of 
separate gnome-speech packages with proprietary drivers).  I am unaware 
of issues which prevent it, and believe that it may only require 
preparing the appropriate ".spec" files.  Since none of the code we link 
directly to in gnome-speech is GPL (it's all LGPL), I don't think there 
is a license compatibility issue there either.  However, many distros 
won't co-package binaries that link to proprietary code, so these 
packages would, as you suggest, need to be add-ons in this case.

Probably the packages should end up being something like 
gnome-speech-core-0.3.rpm, gnome-speech-driver-fonix-0.3.rpm, etc. etc. 
with one additional package per "optional" driver.  These can be added 
at runtime with no problem, gnome-speech provides runtime recognition of 
new drivers.

best regards,

- Bill

Luke Yelavich wrote:
> Hi all.
> I have been thinking about gnome-speech, and compiling the software 
> synthesizer drivers for proprietory synths, such as DECtalk and 
> Cepstral. It has come to my awareness that there may be an issue to do 
> with gnome-speech being distributed as a binary package for various 
> distros, without the proprietory synth drivers built. If this doesn't 
> make sense, perhaps the scenario outlined below may help to get my point 
> across.
>
> A blind/vision impaired user wants to install Linux on their machine. 
> They choose a distro to their liking and want to try out Gnopernicus and 
> GNOME. They find out that Festival is free and works with Gnopernicus. 
> After installing the relevant Festival packages from their distro, they 
> find that they don't like the voices.
>
> After doing some research, they find out that they can buy a software 
> synthesizer for Linux, which can work with Gnopernicus. So they buy it, 
> and install it. However, they can't get it to work with Gnopernicus.
>
> They do more research and find out that gnome-speech needs to be 
> re-compiled in order to work with their software synthesizer. However 
> they don't feel comfortable and/or don't want to compile from source, 
> which makes them feel like the software synth has been a waste of money.
>
> So with the current architecture, is it possible to package a 
> gnome-speech package for a distro as is done now, and also have add-on 
> packages which can be used to install drivers for proprietory synths?
>
> Let me know if you either don't understand, or want more clarrification.
>
> Regards
> Luke
>
>
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--
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Bill Haneman
Gnome Accessibility Project
Sun Microsystems Ireland