Re: [orca-list] Is anyone using Orca with Emacspeak? And does speech-dispatcher support hardware synths?

[Tomas Cerha <cerha brailcom org>]

Dne 14.6.2011 04:11, Joanmarie Diggs napsal(a):
> Hey again Tomas, all.
>
> > I'd rather put it this way: We don't want to put OUR effort into developing output
> > modules for hardware synthesizers
>
> Having pondered this some more.... I think I was asking the wrong
> question before. The right question perhaps is instead: What would it
> take to get speech-dispatcher to such a high degree of awesomeness that
> no one would even consider using a hardware synthesizer? Is it work that
> needs to be done in speech-dispatcher itself, or in espeak, or someplace
> else? And is anyone doing it?

Hi Joanie,

I'd say we will never get there. :-(  Some people simply like their HW synths and 
nothing can make them happier with SW synths.  Most often it is just because of their 
voice.  They are used to it and understand it better than any other voice that SW synths 
can offer, no matter how high the quality is.  There's nothing wrong with that and it is 
perfectly understandable.  They may also prefer its independence on the computer's sound 
system.  It may be just that feeling, that you can ruin you operating system, but that 
small box attached to your computer is still there up and running.

So I believe it is legitimate if people want HW synths.   AFAIK, they are still quite 
common in the US.  As they are quite rare in Europe, we've been steering our efforts 
elsewhere, but we would understand if someone else wanted to put some effort in this 
direction.  There are technical limitations which will not allow their full integration 
at the level similar to SW synths, but they certainly can be made to work for simple 
speech output.

Hope that makes sense.  Tomas