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

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

You have to watch out with eloquence.  There are words it totally craps out on you for.  If you have the 
particle web followed by hes and then day all as one single word (don't do it!,  Do *not* do it!), Eloquence 
will crash.  

-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list [mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of kendell clark
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2014 1:59 AM
To: Hadi Rezaee; orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] Built in Controls for Espeak Pretty Please with Sugar, cheeries, whatever it takes 
on top :)

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hi
I know of this one. It has something to do with period symbols, followed by an underline, followed by a 0. It 
makes eloquence announce that as D O T H U N D R E D followed by whatever you're listening to.
It turns ._2 to D O T H U N D R E D T W E N T Y , ./._3 into ... etc.
This is closed source software, and I don't see this ever getting fixed. I hate to be a bearer of bad news, 
but this is precisely why some of  us have switched over to espeak, because of eloquence's issues that just 
will not ever get fixed. This might be a speech-dispatcher  thing, or it could be eloquence itself. I've been 
working for, I think, about a year and a half, maybe 2 years, trying very painstakingly, to get espeak's US 
english up to snuff, and it's mostly there. It does have some issues that have more to do with rules, how 
espeak interprets teh text, which I'm still struggling with. But it's usable now. IT was tons worse when I 
first started. I now keep eloq around mostly to throw words at, or in case espeak breaks horribly, which does 
happen occasionally.


On 08/29/2014 01:41 AM, Hadi Rezaee wrote:
> I just wanted to send a mail and  Upvote what thomas said I have 
> purchaced voxin because I really can't go along with espeak, and it is 
> extremely terrible when reading package names. I'm just a new user to 
> linux, but just wanted to mention that the punctuation thingy is badly 
> broken with elequence and orca.
>
> On 8/29/2014 11:06 AM, Thomas Ward wrote:
> > Storm,
> >
> > The shortcomings of Speech Dispatcher are well known to me. For what 
> > its worth I am a software developer and an end user, and I empathize 
> > with your and others frustrations with the current technology. In 
> > many ways I have similar frustrations with Speech Dispatcher but for 
> > slightly differing reasons.
> >
> > Unlike some on this list I don't exclusively rely upon free software 
> > like Espeak. I have purchased a number of commercial text to speech 
> > systems like Dectalk, Eloquence, and Cepstral, and am just as 
> > disappointed with Speech Dispatcher's lackluster support for them as 
> > I am with its support for Espeak. After all, I might even have more 
> > of a reason to gripe since I paid money for what were supposedly 
> > better quality text to speech systems, but am getting lackluster 
> > results because there is a definite and obvious difference in 
> > performance with the way Orca did with those synthesizers using Gnome 
> > Speech and the performance Orca has with using Speech dispatcher. Its 
> > clearly a case of Speech Dispatcher being a less desirable solution 
> > for handling speech drivers.
> >
> > The point here is this. So far I have heard a few suggestions of 
> > adding direct support for Espeak in Orca. Basically, writing a Espeak 
> > module that gives Orca direct control over the TTS output.
> > While I see where people are going with this I see two major problems 
> > with it.
> >
> > First, adding Espeak support to Orca assumes everyone uses Espeak, 
> > and only benefits Espeak users. Anyone who happens to use something 
> > like a commercial speech solution like Cepstral Dianne or a free 
> > speech solution like Festival still get shorted. The developer 
> > resolves the problem with Orca and Espeak, which is fine if one 
> > happens to be using Espeak, but does nothing for the rest of us who 
> > may have other preferences.
> >
> > Therefore unless we are looking into the option of supporting every 
> > speech system directly by Orca I am not in favor of supporting Espeak 
> > directly. Its a lot of work that only supports a single text to 
> > speech system, and there is a more effective way of fixing the 
> > problems with Espeak without resorting to direct Espeak support. 
> > Writing a better alternative to Speech Dispatcher may be such a 
> > solution, and not only resolve problems with Espeak but might offer 
> > improvements for Eloquence, Festival, Cepstral, etc as well.
> >
> > Second, adding Espeak support to Orca only helps Orca. This does not 
> > offer a means of offering improved text to speech support to other 
> > applications and games. If we think about Orca and only Orca 
> > accessibility we may in fact be shortchanging ourselves in the long 
> > run by excluding more long term accessibility solutions.
> >
> > For example, as many of you may know Microsoft Windows offers a 
> > speech API, Sapi, which is available to any and all applications.
> > It is used by screen readers like Jaws, NVDA, and Window-Eyes for 
> > traditional screen reader speech output, but is by no means limited 
> > in scope to screen readers. Jim Kitchen, a popular author of 
> > accessible audio games, has used Sapi to speak various things in his 
> > games. Nextup has a number of speech enabled applications like 
> > TextAloud, WeatherAloud, and NewsAloud that speaks the weather, news, 
> > and various other things aloud via Sapi voices.
> > Microsoft has a map program that speaks driving or walking directions 
> > aloud as well. My point being that text to speech support has many 
> > applications besides screen readers and we should not shortchange 
> > ourselves by focusing exclusively on Orca, and ignoring the bigger 
> > picture here.
> >
> > Yes, Speech Dispatcher has problems, and here is an opportunity to 
> > address that issue. Rather than including support directly into Orca 
> > I think what we need to do is replace Speech Dispatcher with a more 
> > stable, more reliable, API for text to speech that does everything 
> > Sapi does for Windows users. Yeah, we can use it in Orca for speech 
> > output, but consider developing something that can be used in talking 
> > weather applications, news applications, e-book readers, whatever. 
> > Plus offer support for as many free and commercial speech engines are 
> > out there so that the user can use what he or she wants to use rather 
> > than limiting ourselves to one and only one text to speech system.
> >
> > I know, for example, I read a lot of books. Quite a number of them 
> > are e-books. However, when reading books I find Espeak gets on my 
> > nerves. Espeak is alright for day to day tasks like checking mail, 
> > writing code, or something like that but not really for reading a 
> > good book. For that I switch over to one of the Cepstral voices which 
> > is more human sounding, more realistic, and is the reason I was 
> > willing to put a little money out for some higher quality voices for 
> > Linux. Therefore if I took time out of my day to write such a speech 
> > system I'd want to be able to be able to choose which text to speech 
> > system I want for specific situations than exclusively devoting all 
> > my effort into one text to speech system which I tolerate more than 
> > like.
> >
> > So to sum up my thoughts let's consider expanding this support a bit, 
> > not focus so much on including Espeak support into Orca, and see what 
> > we can do to come up with a better alternative to speech Dispatcher 
> > rather than putting all or eggs in one basket with Orca and Espeak.
> >
> > On 8/27/14, Storm Dragon <stormdragon2976 gmail com> 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." 
> > > 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. 
> > > 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. Thanks Storm
> > _______________________________________________ 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
>
> _______________________________________________ orca-list mailing list 
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> 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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