[Emacspeak] Re: Announcing "swiftmac" a new voice server for MacOS

[Robert Melton <lists@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

II am not sure what could make it raspy, I am thinking versus the default "mac" server, it has a 1.2 char scale versus a 1.1 char scale.  So, try tweaking that and see if it sounds more correct to you.  But actually, I was trying to be as similar to the mac server as possible, so in next version I will set the base speed and the base char scale to exactly what the mac defaults are. 

-- 
Robert "robertmeta" Melton

> On Apr 6, 2023, at 02:32, Victor Tsaran <vtsaran(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Robert!
> Thanks a lot for the server. Trying it out as we speak. So far so good except that Alex TTS gets raspy when deleting characters.
> Do you observe the same by any chance?
> 
> Thx!
> Victor
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 12:31 PM Robert Melton via Emacspeak <emacspeak(a)emacspeak.org> wrote:
> Hey All! 
> 
> For those who don't like reading, here is the repo: https://github.com/robertmeta/swiftmac
> 
> Below I hope to answer most questions you might have, but ask away if I missed something. 
> 
> Q. What did I do now?
> A. I wrote a new voice server for MacOS 100% in swift with no additional dependancies.  If you can run swift from the command line (meaning, have xcode), you are good to go. 
> 
> Q. Why didn't you just fix the python server?
> A. I tried! Multiple times! A few reasons, the biggest one being I traced some of my problems to something deep and dark happening in pyobjc and lost the thread to fix it (and my will to live).
> 
> Q. What was wrong with the python server? 
> A. Well, for me, it leaked memory to the tune of hundreds of gigs), it would corrupt my voice server, due to the way it allocated stuff it would double-speak by default (the OS didn't understand it was speaking), I had trouble debugging it in any real manner, it attempted to be nonblocking but WOULD block emacs at times. 
> I also disliked the python + additional deps you have to install for python to get it to work.  I am lazy, I want stuff to just work.  I also liked the idea of a server working like the other ones, having a build step and you being able to depend on them once built. 
> 
> Q. So, you just ported the Mac server? 
> A. Yep, basically.  Added a few bells and whistles and still lagging behind in a few areas (no pitch shift on caps yet).
> 
> Q. Who should use it at this neophyte stage? 
> A. The brave and true, I am using it as my daily driver, and if you want to report bugs please build it with debug mode (make install-debug) and send the /tmp/swiftmac-debug-....log file 
> 
> Q. Is the code clean?
> A. No, it is an unholy mess, but if you don't release until you are proud of it you might never release.  It will get better, I promise!  I learned swift to do this so it had a lot of sharp corners for me. 
> 
> Q. What are you goals?
> A.  
>     • No deps except swift
>     • Compiled and multithread for complete non-blocking operations
>     • Highly reliable, will never corrupt speech on MacOS
>     • Drop in (no configuration or special setup required in Eamcs or the operating system.
>     • Feature complete support of all emacs speech server commands
>     • With a separate test script to confirm all features work
> 
> Q. Will you contribute this to Emacspeak
> A. That is the whole point to have it ship in the box, not there yet but getting close, need to support beep caps split caps, pitch shift caps and have a bit more testing.
> 
> Q. What is the license? 
> A. MIT, go nuts!
> 
> Q. Any secret features?
> A. YES!  You can change the volume of sounds, voices and tones seperately by setting environmental variables SWIFTMAC_SOUND_VOLUME, SWIFTMAC_TONE_VOLUME and SWIFTMAC_VOICE_VOLUME between 0 and 1, so 0.5 would be half volume. 
> 
> Q. Anything else? 
> A. Nope, but I do have some questions for the community below!
> 
> ----
> 
> How ARE split caps and beep caps supposed to work?  I get beep caps, beep before a cap using a tone right?  But, how does split caps work, do I break the word in half like CamelCase becomes Camel[*]Case or what? 
> 
> -- 
> Robert "robertmeta" Melton
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