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

[kendell clark <coffeekingms gmail com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

I'd be in favor of this one. Good luck getting anyone here, or
anywhere else to help though. My experience has taught me not to
expect anyone to help, unless they get some insentive out of it. Sad
to say, but it's just the world, I guess. The exception seems to be
the orca developers, and possibly other desktop developers. Mate for
one, firefox, for another, although firefox can lag behind at times.
I've got little to no patience for being led along, and sadly sighted
devs do that with depressing regularity. I can be patient, but if I
get the sense that my patience is getting me nowhere I quickly lose
interest and move on.


On 08/28/2014 11:58 PM, Thomas Ward wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As you rightly have observed its a case of developer convenience 
> verses end user experience. Speaking as a software developer
> myself anything that eases the job of coding, simplifying the job
> of development, and offers some out of the box functionality is
> going to be the ultimate choice out of convenience. Speech
> Dispatcher in this case is such a tool in a developers toolbox. It
> simplifies access to many different software text to speech
> systems, offers a universal way to get onscreen information spoken,
> and therefore that is why Speech Dispatcher is and has been the
> primary method Orca uses for text to speech.
>
> On the flip side I am also an end user too, and recognize Speech 
> Dispatcher isn't necessarily the best way of going about
> supporting any specific text to speech system. With Espeak Speech
> Dispatcher is a little slow and sluggish, doesn't support variants,
> and there are occasionally quarks like the backspace bug which has
> been mentioned. It is important to point out that other text to
> speech systems such as the Cepstral voices which also experience
> similar drawbacks because the Speech Dispatcher support is very
> basic at best. I can remember using my Cepstral voices with Gnome
> Speech and getting much better stability and performance than with
> Speech Dispatcher.
>
> Bottom line, I think we as end users have a choice where to go
> with this. One, we can build that support, a Python module,
> directly into Orca which means any other text to speech application
> can not and will not benefit from our work, or two, we can write a
> new speech service that replaces Speech Dispatcher. In other words
> if we don't like the current mousetrap build a new one. I myself
> would be in favor of writing a new speech service which replaces or
> upgrades Speech Dispatcher with something that offers more direct
> and better support for Espeak, Festival, Cepstral, Dectalk, etc
> while being separate from Orca. That way other apps and screen
> readers can share the new speech service. It could essentially be a
> new version of Gnome Speech, but be more universally shared among
> desktop and console applications. Any thoughts?
>
>
> On 8/28/14, Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com> wrote:
> > Classic case of dev convenience versus user convenience.  Devs
> > seem to prefer spd because of its abstraction and so forth.
> > Users prefer anything that makes the software do its job better
> > regardless of development philosophy.  I'm strongly in the "make
> > e-speak and Orca talk directly to each other" camp.  Too many
> > moving parts is not good sometimes.  Take the bug in Debian with
> > speech-dispatcher 8. Basically, unless you have pulse, it can't
> > open sockets and pretty much doesn't talk at all.  Thank god for
> > Espeakup on that box or I'd be only able to use it remotely via
> > putty.  If Orca coud talk to Espeak directly, this would be a non
> > issue for me.  IMHO too much depends on speech dispatcher.  if it
> > goes belly up, there is absolutely nothing else you can use to
> > make Orca talk anymore.  Used to be, there was libgnome-speech
> > but Orca support for it was discontinued.  Now, it's
> > speech-dispatcher or the sound of silence.  I can't tell you how
> > frustrating it is to know your machine has a perfectly
> > functioning speech synth that works like a charm with one package
> > but not with another.  Speakup and Emacspeak talk just fine. 
> > Orca, does not.  Dedicating work hours to speech-dispatcher is
> > very cold comfort if you don't code.
> >
> > Alex M
> _______________________________________________ orca-list mailing
> list orca-list gnome org 
> 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
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2
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=FjBZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----