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

[Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com>]

Kyle, while I respect your opinion and will agree those are certainly
some valid points you raised. The problem is that many of us happen to
have grown use to using Eloquence with Jaws, Window-Eyes, etc and
would prefer to have the same TTS voices  available for a Linux
system. However, do to the fact Eloquence is not being maintained many
VI Linux users are put in the untenable position of either take the
risks you outlined below or simply do without Eloquence. For some of
us who have migrated to Linux from Windows the decision to just go
with ESpeak is not as simple as you make it out to be.

For example, while I can use ESpeak that doesn't mean I like the
voice. In fact I personally find the voice for ESpeak atrocious, gives
me a headache after a while, and the higher quality sounding voices
such as those from Cepstral sound better but are very sluggish.  So if
I don't like ESpeak, find the Cepstral voices too sluggish, what other
alternatives are there for a Linux user than Voxin?

On Windows if I use NVDA and don't like Espeak I can purchase the
Nuance Vocalizer Voices for $99 and have several high quality voices
that sound far more realistic and human sounding than ESpeak. On Linux
I find the TTS options are pretty few and far between, and Eloquence,
regardless of the name it is marketed under, is still a product I
happen to like despite all the points you raised, and I have as yet to
find a free or commercial solution that is as good as or better than
Eloquence for Linux. So unless I find something more to my liking I'll
continue to use Voxin for as long as it will run.

Cheers!


On 1/8/13, Kyle <kyle4jesus gmail com> wrote:
> For a good product, Voxin sure will crash your system on a simple typo
> or even a word. And it's impossible to fix, because it's unmaintained
> since 2002 or earlier, and no one even knows who has the code to be able
> to fix it. Yes, Voxin, with its shinier, newer name, still crashes on
> the word c a e s u r e, which is more common than you think. Also, I
> can't stress enough the problems that can be caused by running
> 12+-year-old core libraries on a modern system. I'm not exagerating or
> being ridiculous in any way when I say avoid this synthesizer,
> especially in a production environment. It may have been a fairly good
> product 10 years ago, and it may have even been a great product 15 years
> ago, while someone was still maintaining the codebase, but it's
> certainly far from acceptable now, even on Windows, where the word
> crashes are mostly worked around with dictionary exceptions, and old
> core libraries still have to be installed to the system to make it work.
> ~Kyle
> http://kyle.tk/
> --
> "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
> Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"
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