Re: [orca-list] Proposal: Remove the emacspeak suppport

[Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com>]

Hi,

I for one feel that the Emacspeak driver  support should be removed.
My primary reason for saying this is that very few computer users
actually own and use a hardware speech synth like a Dectalk,
Doubeltalk, Speakout, etc these days. A software synth solution like
Espeak, Cepstral, or Voxin/Eloquence  is far more portable and cheaper
to own and use. Plus on top of that most older hardware synths are not
even compatible with a modern PC anyway.

For example, I owned three different hardware synths and can't use any
of them on any of my computers. I have a Dectalk PC, but because it
uses an ISA bus it won't work on a modern desktop board that have PCI
bus slots. I have a Dectalk Express but being a serial device it won't
work on either of my laptops because they only have USB 2.0 ports. I
tried a couple of different USB to serial adapters and neither worked.
Finally, I still have my Braille N' Speak 640K, but again same problem
as the Dectalk Express. No serial ports and a USB to serial adapter
doesn't appear to work with speechbox mode.

In conclusion hardware support for older synths is getting less and
less viable, and the numbr of users still using them is rapidly
dropping off in favor of ESpeak, Eloquence, or something else. So
continuing support for the Emacspeak synth drivers really is
unnecessary at this point. I feel we could clean it out and use
speech-dispatcher for all our synth needs.

After all, if we want hardware synth support then we would be better
served by writing all new drivers for the current hardware devices. I
know there is a newer USB Dectalk Express around which should replace
the old serial model. The Trippletalk PCI and USB models are also good
candidates for new drivers.I'd much rather see effort put towards
supporting USB and PCI based hardware through speech-dispatcher rather
than hanging onto old ISA and serial hardware synth drivers.

On 1/4/12, Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com> wrote:
> Hey guys.
>
> Back in June [1] I asked you all if anyone was using Orca with
> Emacspeak, and as an aside suggested that it would be great if we could
> have support for hardware synthesizers in speechdispatcher.
>
> What resulted from my question was more of a discussion than a concrete
> consensus. But the feeling I got from that discussion was that we have
> people using Orca and people using Emacspeak, but we do not have people
> using hardware synths with Orca via Emacspeak.
>
> If these is indeed the case, and given the plans to make presentation
> modalities "pluginable," having old cruft around which would have to be
> converted is more trouble than it's worth *if* it's honestly not
> something anyone needs.
>
> So... Discussion is, as always, encouraged. But at this point it is a
> proposal on the table for which I'm requesting a vote.
>
> Thanks as always, guys!
> --joanie
>
> [1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/orca-list/2011-June/thread.html#00085
>
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