Re: [orca-list] Built in Controls for Espeak Pretty Please with Sugar, cheeries, whatever it takes on top :)

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

I must admit that I'm surprised at the level of hostility I have seen with regard to this idea.  In light of 
it, I honestly think that nothing short of getting funding and actually hiring somebody to do it is the only 
way this will happen.  Such a pity.  While I think the idea of speech dispatcher is a good one, 
unfortunately, all too often, as Rudyard Kippling would've put it"Desire outruns performance."  When this 
happens, the user is left in the lurch completely without speech unless he or she has console speech or 
another solution like Emacspeak installed.  

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Storm Dragon
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 12:24 AM
To: Orca-list
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Built in Controls for Espeak Pretty Please with Sugar, cheeries, whatever it takes 
on top :)

Howdy,
This, like every other issue that is raised here, was only meant to get a yes or no vote. It shouldn't 
disintegrate into a spame/flame/I'm way too busy to care war. Everyone is busy, we all have lives, and yet, 
most of us still manage to get things done on the projects we manage. I'm sure Joanie is very capable of 
making her own decisions ragarding what to work on with Orca, and that if this is something the community 
wants, as seems to be the case (something like 5 yes to 2 no so far), she will at least consider it. It is 
something I, and several others, really would like, and adding it would not hurt the project in any way, and 
would fix a lot of problems cause due to the lack of speech-dispatcher's abilities.
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 03:02:13PM +1000, Luke Yelavich wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 01:48:04PM AEST, Storm Dragon wrote:
> > Howdy,
> > Nearly every other screen reader has multiple ways to interact with speech. NVDA has a built in espeak, 
> > and the other nonfree readers have synths as well, I think most have a built in Eloquence. Never once, 
> > have I heard any of those users complain that their screen reader has entirely too many ways to talk. 
> > Also, as far as I am aware, no one has ever said "Man, I really wish my screen reader had to jump through 
> > layer after layer of junk to speak."
>
> Just because other screen readers interface directly with a speech synthesizer doesn't mean Orca should. 
> Orca certainly has the modularity to allow for different speech systems to be supported, including a direct 
> eSpeak driver, but given speech-dispatcher is the only TTS backend supported, that may very well change in 
> the future.
>
> > Speech-dispatcher is ok, for minimal usage, but it crashes with alsa, 
> > has odd puctuation inconsistancies, and is slow as molasses. The last 
> > time development of speech-dispatcher even reached a snail's pace was 
> > when open-speech or whatever was called was made because people weree 
> > frustrated with the lack of progress made by speech-dispatcher. I'm 
> > not even asking to replace spd. Let the people who like it use it. 
> > That's one thing that makes Linux rock, there's usually more than one 
> > way to do things. for some people, speech-dispatcher may be fine. for me, it's falling rather short.
>
> Yes, speech-dispatcher has some annoying issues that need attentionnnnnn. Nobody is denying that, not even 
> me. There are many things that niggle me about speech-dispatcher too. However I have not yet been able to 
> find the time and desire to want to sit down and try and fix them. Perhaps since there are issues with 
> speech-dispatcher that really annoy you, you could consider getting involved and help properly identify sed 
> issues, and maybe even fix them.
>
> > Also, with a reliable way to deliver speech, speech-dispatcher can drag on it its currently abysmally slow 
> > progress, and we can have fully working espeak. Speech-dispatcher has been around and for a long time now, 
> > and there still not full support for espeak... No way to use variants, and you have to hack it to use 
> > freasonably fast espeak.
>
> The only reason speech-dispatcher's development progress is abysmally slow is because people cannot 
> currently find the time to work on it.
>
> For those of you who want a direct eSpeak orca driver, you will probably have to find someone to write the 
> driver, probably someone who wants the same thing as you do. I am sure Joanie could, but I think she has her 
> hands full with more time consuming stuff, such as keeping up with GNOME's developments, and keeping up with 
> the ever changing nature of the web and ensuring users have a sane browsing experience with Firefox.
>
> As for speech-dispatcher, the issues you have raised are well known, and need to be addressed. When time 
> allows, either myself or someone else will work on fixing Speech-dispatcher not supporting eSpeak synth 
> variants, and fixing the ALSA driver. Given I work on speech-dispatcher in my spare time, and given I also 
> have a life and interests outside of my full time job, I can give no ETA as to when these issues will be 
> addressed.
>
> Luke
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> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> The manual is at 
> http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out how 
> to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp

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