-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Greetings all.
For a while now, it has been possible to have multiple audio streams playing at
the same time, using ALSA's
dmix plugin under Linux. This also has meant the ability to have speech audible
at the same time as other
audio. Users have desired the ability to do this for a while now, particularly
since it has been possible in
other operating systems for a long time.
Since eSpeak has been developed, we have had a very usable synthesizer for
speech output, which supports a
growing number of languages. Since this synthesizer is cross-platform, the
choice was made by the author to
use PortAudio, thereby supporting all platforms where PortAudio is available.
Since PortAudio v19, it has been
possible to use Alsa for audio output via PortAudio. In theory, this is good
news, however in practice, this
has created more problems than it should solve, for the following reasons, as
far as I see things:
* PortAudio v19 has had no official release, and so seems to be in a rather
constant state of flux, making it
difficult for distros to reliably support a working version.
* PortAudio's alsa implementation seems to currently be broken, which is
evident while using eSpeak, and
attempting to speak multiple strings of text rapidly over a short period of
time.
* As far as I've seen, there is no easy way for the user to select which output
device portaudio should use.
Added to that, if more than one app is using portaudio, this will affect that
application as well as espeak,
which may not be what the user desires.
* All proprietary synths only support oss output, which makes simultaneous
audio and speech currently
impossible.
What I would like to propose, is the following. Since a large porshion of
GNOME's multimedia framework is now
using gStreamer, I would like to suggest that we make all gnome-speech drivers
use gStreamer, and if possible,
add another option to the sound preferences, to allow the user to select which
soundcard they wish to use for
speech output. This would result in gstreamer being used via Alsa on Linux,
thereby allowing simultaneous
audio and speech, which would likely happen at the gstreamer level before it
even reaches alsa. (I don't
really know how gstreamer works, so this is a guess on my part.)
- From what I have seen, just about all proprietary synth APIs support sending
audio data from the synth back to
the calling application, thereby allowing the audio to be sent whereever the
application wishes. I am well
aware that gnome-speech was initially designed to not care about how the audio
was played, but since its
initial inclusion in GNOME, gstreamer has become the standard multimedia
framework for GNOME, and at least in
Ubuntu's implementation, allows the user to set different devices for several
different uses, such as sound
events, music and movies, and audio/video conferencing.
I think we owe users the ability to use speech alongside audio, and offer it in
an easy to use way, thereby
putting full control in their hands. Now that we are at the beginning of a new
GNOME release, I personally
think its time to get serious about offering users a deacent screen reader and
speech experience, the same, if
not better than what other operating systems offer.
I have sent this post to these lists, to try and get as wide a viewpoint, and
discussion as possible. I would
appreciate any replies to be sent to all lists, to ensure everybody can
participate in the discussion.
I would like to invite both users and developers to express their views on a
matter which I believe needs
resolving. Input from gnome devs, particularly those for gnome-speech is very
much welcome.
So, lets sort something out.
- --
Luke Yelavich
GPG key: 0xD06320CE
(http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt)
Email & MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFG78MHjVefwtBjIM4RAmvvAKCHJH5ZlcpwSwweLV9a/1mMJMXQHQCfTdtH
WXhAp+9KaQv85VOYyGKmtYw=
=46d4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
_______________________________________________
Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
