Re: [orca-list] ORCA improvements

[Bill Cox <waywardgeek gmail com>]

I'm CC-ing the vinux group, hoping some members might also want this
sort of feature.

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Luke Yelavich <themuso ubuntu com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 09, 2010 at 05:03:18PM CEST, Bill Cox wrote:
> > I'll look at the problem on 64-bit Ubuntu Lucid.  However, over the
> > next several months I would love to help out in an effort to make
> > various voices easier to select, install and use.  We've got a guy
> > working on OpenSAPI to make Microsoft voices available.  I'd love to
> > have a single accessible application where users could select any of
> > the free voices, or even buy the non-free voices.  One problem is that
> > non-free voices all have custom ways to buy and install, and it
> > depends on your flavor of OS.  Could we work with Gilles, Cepstral,
> > and the others to have a clearing-house application which talks to
> > their web sites and helps out with buying, installing, and maintaining
> > voices?  We could even allow users to preview voices to help determine
> > which ones they actually would like to buy.  This sort of app is
> > exactly what's missing in open-source land for the blind.
>
> While I haven't thought of how we could standardise on buying these proprietary speech synthesizers, I have 
> certainly been thinking about how we can make it easier for users to install and use the speech synthesizer 
> they have bought. I have already given the design of this feature much thought, and it will require the 
> participation of all proprietary speech synthesizer vendors, as well as one or two open source projects 
> like OpenTTS/speech-dispatcher.
>
> I have yet to completely document my thoughts and publish them, but I hope to do that very shortly. If 
> tnere is enough demand, I can see about writing them up and publishing them sooner.
>
> Luke

I certainly support the idea, Luke.  As soon as you have time, I'd
like to hear more.

Bill