Dear Maintainer/Uploaders of festival and Users of festival-docs, To clarify the situation. festival-doc currently contains a html and ps (Postscript) version of the "Festival Manual". The version number is 1.4.2 and dates from 25th July 2001.
CMU (the current employer of Prof. Alan Black - one of the original authors of festival) has an online version of the manual version number 1.4.3 and dated 27th December 2002. CSTR at University of Edinburgh - (the University where festival was originally written) has an online version of the manual version number 1.4.0 and dated 17th July 1999. No later copies of the main content of "Festival Manual" appear to have been published. The current Debian festival (not festival-docs) package ships a copy of "Festival Manual" as part of the festival deb file. It is labelled 1.4.3. It like all the others is old. It is superior to the CMU online version in one respect the festival Scheme interpreter function list at the end of this manual is dynamically regenerated from the source code each time we build the festival package. Thus is reflects the "function comment lines" of the current Debian version of festival. Please note the copy of "Festival manual" we ship with the festival deb is in "info" format and may be accessed using "info festival" command. I didn't really care which format I use hence my suggestion that we drop festival-doc. BUT... The format may be important from an a11y perspective for our users ! Based your combined knowledge a11y issues could everyone give an opinion on "info" vs "html" vs "ps". Please everyone give your opinion on this. Should we just choose one of those formats not necessarily the current "info" format for bundling with festival deb and drop festival-doc or are the additional formats important? I strongly suggest from now on we build whatever manuals regenerated from the actual festival source code in our current deb. This suggests festival-doc even if it is decided to continue to exist should be a binary package built from the common festival source package, i.e. from the debian/control and debian/rules files of the festival source package. Based on this I think it would be appropriate for JP as maintainer of festival to issue a Debian ITA over the orphaned packages while we decide the formats and then choose whether we ship a binary festival-doc package built from festival source package or only ship the one format (as best serves the need of a11y users) inside the festival binary package. I look forward to hearing your experiences on formats from a a11y perspective. Comments? I hope you agree that we should regenerate any shipped version of "Festival manual" (even though the bulk text is old) from our source code as we do for the current "info" format (which may change based on your input). Comments? I have not pursued the speech-tools angle yet, but as a precaution I think JP should Debian ITA in his capacity as maintainer of speech-tools while we figure out how to integrate its building out of the common source or drop etc... with very best regards, Peter
