Re: IBM VIAVOICE TTS for Linux?

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 16 Apr 2002, Russ Pitman <rjp@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Hum: it looks like IBM may have removed the (free) ViaVoice SDK
    for linux offering.

My understanding is that Via Voice is free in the sense of `gratis',
not free in the sense of `freedom'.  If it were free as in freedom, he
would be offering you the sources and you would have the legal right
to use, copy, study, modify, and redistribute them.

Take a look at EFlite, an unrestricted, open source, free software
speech server for Emacspeak:

    http://eflite.sourceforge.net/

You can download a very early test distribution.

After installation, I ran the program after first setting two
environmental variables:

    export EMACS_UNIBYTE=1
    export DTK_TCL=/usr/local/bin/eflite
    emacs -q -l /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/lisp/emacspeak-setup.el

Eflite is not yet as good as the more developed programs.  Certainly,
the early version that I tested had problems.  But eflite does
generate speech without requiring any special hardware.  It looks very
promising to me and it is free in the sense of freedom.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                  bob@xxxxxxxxxxx
    Rattlesnake Enterprises             http://www.rattlesnake.com

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