Re: [orca-list] Gnuspeech

[Tony Baechler <tony baechler net>]

Hi,

As near as I can figure out on a Ubuntu 15.04 system, the total installed 
size with espeak, libespeak1, libespeak-dev, libespeak-dbg and espeak-data 
is 3248 KB.  However, that doesn't include any other necessary audio 
libraries such as Pulse or Portaudio.  Gnuspeech, also including the shared 
library, development headers, data and binaries works out to 3.8 MB, but 
doesn't need any extra audio libraries because it writes to a .wav file. 
Not being a programmer, I have no idea if Speech Dispatcher could interface 
with the shared library to generate speech or if a .wav file would have to 
be written every time a phrase is to be spoken.  Also, Gnuspeech only has a 
single English voice while ESpeak has several, but the Espeak data files 
must be compiled while the Gnuspeech data is in plain text, can be modified 
with any text editor and doesn't need to be compiled.  Finally, I'm not 
including the GUI for either package because the Gnuspeech GUI only runs on 
Mac OS X and neither package requires a GUI to generate speech.  The Debian 
packages for ESpeak have a DFSG suffix, meaning that some components of 
ESpeak are missing from the Debian packages.  I don't know what those are or 
how big.  Similarly, I'm not including the documentation.  Overall, the 
total installed size of both is about the same, but I think Gnuspeech is 
more configurable with less effort.  If you don't count the data files, 
Gnuspeech is definitely much smaller; less than 1 MB compiles, but the 
pronounciation is really bad.  It's the dictionary which provides the 
excellent pronounciation at such a small size.

On 10/25/2015 9:46 AM, B. Henry wrote:
> How does that footprint compare with espeak and /or other synth voices?
> I was first surprised how the accent did not sound like a native English speaker, but then even more 
> surprised that after a half a minute I actually
> found the voice quite understandable and reasonably pleasant.