Re: Thoughts on speech

["Steve Lee" <steve fullmeasure co uk>]

Brilliant Will, I've just leant a whole lot, thanks
What is the main API for speech? Something like speak( sText ) ?

Steve

On 07/03/2008, Willie Walker <William Walker sun com> wrote:
> OK - well....let's see.  I'll fill in what I know, but I need the Speech
>  Dispatcher folks to fill in what they know.
>
>  GNOME Speech:
>
>    Just a thin wrapper over a TTS engine.
>
>    Doesn't do audio management - leaves that to the TTS engine.
>
>    Drivers for Festival, FreeTTS, DECtalk, IBMTTS/ViaVoice,
>    Loquendo, eSpeak, Cesptral/Swift, Eloquence, and even a
>    wrapper for SpeechDispatcher.  No support for DECtalk
>    Express.
>
>    At a minimum, callbacks supported at the utterance level,
>    where an utterance is the chunk of text tossed at it via
>    a single speak command.  Callbacks are also supported at
>    the word progress level if the engine supports it.
>
>    Mostly just sends text off to the speech synthesis engine
>    for speaking.  The only 'extra' stuff that's really done
>    is adding index marks to text strings to be notified of
>    speech progress at the word level for those TTS engines
>    that support it.
>
>    No real support for SSML.
>
>    Audio is controlled by the speech synthesis engine.
>
>    Bonobo/CORBA based, essentially locking it to GNOME
>    for all intents and purposes.
>
>    Speech services are discoverable and activatable as
>    system services (via Bonobo Activation).
>
>    Those skilled in the art and with knowledge of the TTS
>    engine's API can write a driver in a day.  It's much more
>    difficult for those not skilled in the art.  ;-)
>
>    Difficult to debug.
>
>  Will
>
>
>  David Bolter wrote:
>  > Will,
>  >
>  > That sounds very reasonable to me.  Can you start it?  :)
>  >
>  > cheers,
>  > D
>  > Willie Walker wrote:
>  >> Hi All:
>  >>
>  >> This speech issue is obviously one filled with passion and high
>  >> expectations.  I think our ultimate end goal here is to find a
>  >> solution that works well and fits within the various constraints.
>  >>
>  >> The two solutions we've been talking about, gnome-speech and Speech
>  >> Dispatcher, both have their strengths and weaknesses, and I'm not sure
>  >> we all understand what they are.  Nor do I think we all understand
>  >> what "works well" means and what the constraints are.
>  >>
>  >> As an exercise, what do you all think of us having a somewhat
>  >> impassioned and pragmatic discussion about the various features and
>  >> the current state of gnome-speech and Speech Dispatcher?
>  >>
>  >> Will
>  >> _______________________________________________
>  >> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
>  >> gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
>  >> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>  >>
>  >
>
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>


-- 
Steve Lee
--
Open Source Assistive Technology
www.fullmeasure.co.uk