Re: [orca-list] How many people us voxin?

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

Andy B. <sonfire11 gmail com> wrote:
> I was courious as to how many people use voxin and why/why they don't use
> it? I am considering whether or not it is a worthwhile project to use,
> considering I have had some problems with it. I guess the better question is
> would or do you like espeak as the primary voice? If so, why?

I don't use Voxin (aka Eloquence/IBM ViaVoice/IBM TTS) primarily because it's
only available as a 32-bit executable and it isn't being maintained anymore,
i.e., it's a dead end that will not see further development or bugs fixed. The
32-bit issue isn't a problem with Orca, but it's more of a nuisance with other
packages such as Emacspeak, which I use heavily.

In addition, I use my braille display extensively and I also have a DECTALK
Express synthesizer that still works fine - it's a better voice than Voxin in
my opinion but again, it isn't relevant to Orca. For Orca, I just use the
braille display and let ESpeak do the speech work.

These aren't outright objections to Voxin - they're just reasons why I haven't
gone through the steps of buying it, downloading it and installing the
relevant 32-bit libraries and tclx packages for Emacspeak (which will all
happily coexist with 64-bit libraries on the same system).

That's a bit of an involved answer but I hope it helps.