Re: Gnopernicus, Festival, VMware and getting it all working

["Al Puzzuoli" <alpuzz gmail com>]

Hello Garry,

I  have also been testing with VMware, as well as real boxes, running Fedora 
5, and the latest Ubuntu flight releases.
one interesting point is that I am seeing the exact same issue you are 
experiencing with festival under VMware, and I am uncertain as to why this 
is the case.  I have not tried freTTs, but I have had good results in a 
Fedora VM with both Software Dec, as well as TTSynth, formerly ViaVoice.  I 
purchased a prerelease version of TTSynth a few months back from Capital 
Accessibility.  The synthesizer itself works quite well and is very 
responsive; However, I  am becoming concerned by a seeming lethargy on the 
part of IBM to actually roll out a release version.  The current prerelease 
package is only distributed as rpms, and it is fairly simple to get it up 
and running on any RedHat based box.  However, I  have been unable to obtain 
any documentation as to how the synthesizer could be used under other 
distros, such as Ubuntu.

On a slightly different note, once you resolve your synthesizer woes, you 
might consider looking at Orca as well as gnopernicus.  orca is available 
via anonymous cvs from the gnome repository.  I believe the program is still 
considered prerelease, but already includes some very nice functionality, 
such as an intuitive flat review mode, as well as good support for some 
popular productivity applications, such as Open Office writer, and 
evolution.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Garry Turkington" <garrys lists gmail com>
To: <gnome-accessibility-list gnome org>
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 11:59 PM
Subject: Gnopernicus, Festival, VMware and getting it all working


> Hi,
>
> After having it on my todo list for literally years I've been trying to 
> get Gnopernicus up and working.  I've been using a Windows screen reader 
> for the GUI side of the world and either a console terminal or more 
> recently Speakup for my access to Linux.  Considering Linux is where I 
> spend the majority of my time it seems silly not to try and maximize my 
> uses of its tools.
>
> So the great Gnome accessibility experiments started this week and my 
> results have been less than stellar.  So I'd like to ask some questions to 
> try and put me on the right path.  Some are pretty specific, others are 
> more in the arena of general guidelines.
>
> My biggest problem is that I can't get Festival to work.  Any time I throw 
> a text string at it I get nothing but a rather stuttered rasp from the 
> speakers.  Nothing even vaguely intelligible.  Sound in general is 
> working - tested that with .wav and .mp3 files.
>
> I suspect my problem is that I've been trying this within VMware virtual 
> machines.  I could believe that the issues around guest/host timing could 
> mess up a speech engine with an internal feedback loop but the fact that 
> normal audio -- and indeed freeTTS -- do speak confuses me.  However, both 
> Festival and a demo version of Cepstral just throw noise at me.  Has 
> anyone ever got either  speech engine working in a VM?  After years of 
> multi-boot machines I swore that I'd never return there and have been 
> relying heavily on VMware for some time.  If I have to natively install so 
> be it but it'd be seriously non-optimal for me.
>
> I mentioned I did get freetts to speak.  That's only using it directly, I 
> never managed to rebuild all the bits I need to actually try Gnopernicus 
> with it.  A Fedora core 5 install couldn't build the Java Access Bridge as 
> it seems some of the AB Java implementations are now out of date with the 
> internal Gnome IDL - a few new methods have appeared in places from what I 
> can tell.  I built the AB on a Fedora Core 4 install but then the 
> gnome-speech build failed, not being able to find some required Java 
> classes.
>
> So, what external dependencies do these packages have?  Are there 
> specific -devel packages, libraries or jar files that need be available at 
> buildtime?  Or are they relatively self-contained?
>
> Last question is on what distributions people have had most success with 
> re getting all the pieces working.  I see the Gnopernicus site only 
> explicitly calls out Sun's JDS and Ubuntu for its tested distros.  I'm 
> currently using Fedora (4 and 5), CentOS (4.3), Red Hat Enterprise WS 
> (4) - I'll happily install Ubuntu or JDS  but referencing above this would 
> be much easier if I can do it under VMware.  If I have to install natively 
> then I'll become more risk averse.
>
> Any comments or advice gratefully received.  I've done a lot of googling 
> but I seem to be trapped by the VMware question (I assume) and what I 
> suspect is a version clash with building for freetts under Fedora and I've 
> not seen these issues directly addressed.
>
> Many thanks,
> Garry
>
> --
> Garry Turkington
> garry turkington gmail com
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