Emacspeak And Software Dectalk

["Bruce" <chester02@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tim!

    Do you have a write-up of your fix for 5.0? It would be nice to forward it to the list if it is for Emacspeak.

    Also, I had talked with a North Carolina university software tech in their disability department and they are not even aware of the Fonix Dectalk soft Syn and I had mentioned this to John when I spoke on the phone when ordering the Dectalk soft syn. I sense either poor advertising or simply lack of knowledge to those who could in fact use it in the future. How many other universities are not aware?
    And it is true that Flight needs a lot of work for understandability and no other syn out there that I am aware of is in as many languages as Dectalk and as understandable, which is number one in computer programming for the blind to break down the barriers.

    I think more should be done, besides Cornell University is using Linux now in Ithaca New York and Python programming language for all there analyses, so I find it very foolish to give up now. The bible teacher of our church is in fact in charge of the department that is doing government research and the Linux/Python platform.

    Linux is the future and those first in the field will have the advantage and Emacspeak and Dectalk is the best we have for the blind when Linux is first choice over Windows in the future.

    I just want you to know and would like Tim to post his fix.

        Bruce



I use the software dectalk at home and the dectalk express hardware
synth at work. 
I purchased the 6.41 versin when it was first made available and then
the version 5 when it came out. 

After fixing some minor problems with the tcldtk.c file and the
dtk-soft script, version 5 is now working and working a lot better
than version 641 use to (volume better, responsiveness problems under
Debian are gone). 

I also use various other software synths and have a working, but buggy
version of Cepstral's speech server working with emacspeak. 

While I really like the quality of the Cepstral voices, a single voice
costs about the same as the dectalk software and the dectalk has
multiple voice support. I also find Cepstral's voice does not work as
well at high speaking rates - it loses clarity at higher speeds while
the software dectalk seems better at handling higher speeds.

All in all, I think the sftware dectalk is probably the best value for
a clear and versatile software speech synthesizer for
emacspeak. Nothing seems to havve the clarity and reliability of Via
voice, which I miss very much. I would not like to see support for the
software dectalk dropped. 

Raman, can I ask what do you use for a software synthesizer or do you
only use hardware synths?

Tim



>>>>> "tvr" == T V Raman <tvraman@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

 tvr> I'd like to conduct a brief survey on the Emacspeak list to see
 tvr> if it is worthwhile to continue the support for Software
 tvr> Dectalk. The Dectalk has been my favorite TTS engine for a long
 tvr> time, but the reason I'm asking is to see if the number of users
 tvr> it has justifies the time investment.

 tvr> Last I checked around the time of the DTK 5.0 release John
 tvr> Oelfke of Fonix indicated that they had less than 25 software
 tvr> Dectalk customers for Emacspeak --- and if that is indeed the
 tvr> number, I for one think it's time to drop it.

 tvr> If you are interested in seeing Software Dectalk support
 tvr> continue in Emacspeak, please follow-up to this note so you get
 tvr> counted --- with answers to the following:

 tvr> 0) Do you use the software Dectalk with Emacspeak?  1) When did
 tvr> you buy it (approx date)

 tvr> Please follow-up to this note so that your message goes to both
 tvr> the emacspeak list and John Oelfke And if there are indeed a
 tvr> very small number, I can safely drop support for it. This is of
 tvr> course not to discourage other folks who may want to pick up
 tvr> maintaining that code going forward independent of what we find
 tvr> out as we count up the numbers.


 tvr> --Raman

 tvr> -- Best Regards, --raman

      
 tvr> Email: raman@xxxxxxxxxxx WWW: http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/
 tvr> AIM: TVRaman PGP:
 tvr> http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/raman-almaden.asc IRC:
 tvr> irc://irc.gnu.org/emacspeak

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