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Re: [orca-list] IBMTTS and slackware

As I understand it, voxin uses the same synthesiser as ttsynth (the
voxin website says it provides IBM viavoice tts). This should sound near
enough the same. I believe ttsynth and voxin could be considered as
synthesiser distributions (they provide the synthesiser, and some other
tools to aid using the synthesiser, eg. drivers for various screen
readers, and in the case of voxin the compatibility library as well).

I have just checked the prices of both ttsynth and voxin, and can't help
feeling someone is taking the... TTSynth is 40 USD where as voxin is
4.29 eur (or $5.78). What is one getting for $34.22 when buying TTSynth,
according to the website it won't be support. I would be interested to
know why TTSynth is 6.92 (to two decimal places) times more than voxin.
Can you think of anything else where two different sellers vary in price
by a factor of nearly 7!

At the cost of voxin, and the potential that they might be interested in
what I achieve with slackware, so may provide some technical information
on what I need to have, I might just buy it.

Michael Whapples
On Sun, 2008-06-01 at 17:54 -0400, Chris Gilland: Desktop wrote:

Well, how does Voxin sound?  Can any of yall send me an mp3 sample?
I'd never heard of it.
Chris.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples aim com>
To: "Chris Gilland: Desktop" <chrisgilland carolina rr com>
Cc: <orca-list gnome org>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 5:21 PM
Subject: Re: [orca-list] IBMTTS and slackware




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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