Re: emacspeak pitch changes in ubuntu package not working

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Tcl driver for emacspeak has a number of issues. I no longer use this server, preferring instead to pay the very small fee for ViaVoice/Outloud.

From memory, the Tcl driver for espeak has some additional complexity to support multiple languages. It does have some basic support for changing voice/pitch settings, but I think there are some state tracking/transition issues with how it is implemented - just can't quite remember. 

What is really needed is for someone to step up and look at the code base to see if it can be improved. I did start working on a new server which uses eSpeak, but not Tcl. The version I was working on uses Clojure (a JVM language), which I think could be good because Clojure has great support for concurrency, will run anywhere that a JVM can run and would possibly mean being able to run emacspeak on more platforms. The downside is the startup time, but this could possibly be made negligible with a bit of effort. I got as far as being ale to get an interface from Java and Clojure to espeak system calls using JNI and had a very basic PoC server, but have not had time to get back to it. Part of what I needed was more Clojure experience before moving forward with the right design. 

At the end of the day, if you want a better eSpeak server for emacspeak, you probably need to step up and see what you can do to improve what is there. The server protocol is very simple once you look at it and a lot of what is needed is already in the tts Tcl lib, so all you really need to do is work out how to interface with the espeak API, track state and map the state transitions to what makes best sense given the facilities offered by eSpeak. 

Tim

 

On 17 May 2015 at 02:55, Steve Holmes <steve@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I would like to weigh in here. Yes, espeak as a synth does support
pitch changes as I can do all the pitch changes I want with
speakup. I can't remember how to do this now, but I remember in the
past being able to get emacspeak to sound different pitches when
reading a line of text but could never get emacspeak to speak single
characters in a different pitch when capitalized. This not only works
in speakup on a native console, but it also works with Orca using
speech dispatcher. So I don't know if it is the tcl speech driver for
espeak or what. I also would love to have pitch reflect capital
letters instead of hearing "capital" all the time.

On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 04:43:05PM +0200, Florian Beijers wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently, I use eSpeak. I'm getting mixed signals from people
> regarding eSpeak's support for these pitch changes however. Some say
> it is supported, others say they hear no difference. I can say I hear
> nothing on a vanilla installation of the Emacspeak Ubuntu package. Are
> you stating that this means eSpeak in fact does not support these
> changes, since according to you no other action should be required?
>
> Thanks,
> Florian
>
> 2015-05-15 19:05 GMT+02:00, raman <raman@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> > The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
> > that has been posted to gmane.emacs.emacspeak.general as well.
> >
> > Please specify which TTS engine you're using. Pitch changes may not be
> > supported on all engines. You dont have to do anything special to get
> > these changes if they're supported
> > --
> >
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--

regards,

Tim

--

Tim Cross