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

["B. Henry" <burt1iband gmail com>]

As I hinted at, and others have more directly said, starting from scratch requires a lot of foundation 
building which 
takes time and energy. Then perhaps one has a better platform, but perhaps just a different set of advantages 
and 
disadvantages that wiill take still more time and energy. 
Question, specifically why would a new bridge between apps and synths be better than speechdispatcher? 
I am saying if one spent the same time fixing speechdispatcher that one would spend on starting from scratch 
would things 
advance further, and if not, what is so fundamentally wrong with speech dispatcher that makes it not very 
fixable?

On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 12:58:02AM -0400, 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
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