Re: New activity: Speak
Hi Josh - This is pretty fantastic. I've enjoyed playing around with it. One simple change that I think would add a lot is some color. More specifically, the XO uses a two-tone (stroke & fill) color scheme as a form of visual identity. It would be great to fill the entire background in the child's chosen fill color, and perhaps render the mouth in the stroke color, to emphasize the identity of each child's XO. There is an API for obtaining these colors. Another nice touch would be to make the eyes follow the carat while typing, instead of remaining focused on the mouse (since, one would assume, use of mouse and keyboard are mutually exclusive), as though he were anticipating what he was about to say. Finally, a subtle but wonderfully effective technique that a professor of mine often used for characters with eyes is to periodically return the pupils to the center of the eyeball. This creates a sort of dialogue between the character and the child, as it appears that the he is interested both in the movement of the cursor and in the individual moving it. - Eben On Jan 10, 2008 4:27 AM, Joshua Minor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi everyone, >I made a new activity called Speak. It is a talking face for the > XO laptop. Anything you type will be spoken aloud using the XO's > speech synthesizer, espeak. You can adjust the accent, rate and pitch > of the voice as well as the shape of the eyes and mouth. This is a > great way to experiment with the speech synthesizer, learn to type or > just have fun making a funny face for your XO. > > I hope you like it. > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Speak > > Thanks to Arjun Sarwal, Hemant Goyal and Bernardo Innocenti for their > advice while making this. > > Also, if anyone has experience or ideas on how to get access to > espeak's per-phoneme timing data from python, please let me know. > > -josh > > ___ > Devel mailing list > Devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel > ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: New activity: Speak
On Jan 10, 2008 1:27 AM, Joshua Minor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi everyone, >I made a new activity called Speak. It is a talking face for the > XO laptop. Anything you type will be spoken aloud using the XO's > speech synthesizer, espeak. You can adjust the accent, rate and pitch > of the voice as well as the shape of the eyes and mouth. This is a > great way to experiment with the speech synthesizer, learn to type or > just have fun making a funny face for your XO. > > I hope you like it. > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Speak This is wonderful, because it will allow children to experiment with language, not just type in normal text. In espeak, phoneme sets and orthographies can be added for any language. Do you support this? Can this or the Screen Reader project be adapted to reading content, such as the children's picturebooks provided in the Library? (We would presumably need a text file to go with each document.) I think that it would be a great boost for child and adult literacy both if little children could sit on their parents' or grandparents laps and have the XO read them both a story. In that same vein, would anybody be interested in creating a karaoke activity? Same-language captioning of Bollywood musicals is claimed to be the most effective literacy measure in India. > Thanks to Arjun Sarwal, Hemant Goyal and Bernardo Innocenti for their > advice while making this. > > Also, if anyone has experience or ideas on how to get access to > espeak's per-phoneme timing data from python, please let me know. > > -josh Do you want to do that while running, or would a precomputed table meet your needs? -- Edward Cherlin Earth Treasury: End Poverty at a Profit http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: New activity: Speak
> Can this or the Screen Reader project be adapted to reading content, > such as the children's picturebooks provided in the Library? (We would > presumably need a text file to go with each document.) There is a project in motion which will provide a service to any sugar activity, allowing one to speak a selected chunk of text anywhere. With a little cooperation from activities, this feature will hopefully be able to do as you describe. - Eben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: New activity: Speak
On Jan 10, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Edward Cherlin wrote: > On Jan 10, 2008 1:27 AM, Joshua Minor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Hi everyone, >>I made a new activity called Speak >> >> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Speak > > This is wonderful, because it will allow children to experiment with > language, not just type in normal text. :) > > In espeak, phoneme sets and orthographies can be added for any > language. Do you support this? Speak calls the espeak command line tool to query the available languages as well as to generate the audio, so any new or changed voices in espeak will show up in Speak automatically. It does filter out the Mbrola voices because they don't actually produce sound. I plan to experiment with calling espeak via their API but I will make sure to avoid any limitation on the set of languages. > Can this or the Screen Reader project be adapted to reading content, > such as the children's picturebooks provided in the Library? (We would > presumably need a text file to go with each document.) > > I think that it would be a great boost for child and adult literacy > both if little children could sit on their parents' or grandparents > laps and have the XO read them both a story. XO is the new Teddy Ruxpin :) I was thinking of adding a toolbar tab to allow for some sort of game/ story/lesson modes. It would be cool if someone could write a plugin/ extension for a guessing game, story reader, spelling game (ala TalknType) or something like that. I have also considered wrapping Speak into a reusable component so other activities could add a talking face easily. I'm not sure of the best way to do this. > In that same vein, would anybody be interested in creating a karaoke > activity? Same-language captioning of Bollywood musicals is claimed to > be the most effective literacy measure in India. That would be awesome! >> Also, if anyone has experience or ideas on how to get access to >> espeak's per-phoneme timing data from python, please let me know. >> >> -josh > > Do you want to do that while running, or would a precomputed table > meet your needs? I would like to get callbacks for each phoneme while the voice is playing, so that I can shape the mouth correctly for each one. If done well, this could be a nice visual cue to help understand the voice. I would also have to rework how espeak is wired up to gstreamer. Right now I have espeak write out a wav file and then I play that back via the gst module. I wasn't able to get them piped together in a reliable way. Specifically when I run espeak --stdout and then attach that to a gst pipeline that starts with an fdsrc, it only works once. I was not able to restart or rebuild a new pipeline to speak another sentence. -josh ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: New activity: Speak
On Jan 10, 2008, at 8:57 AM, Eben Eliason wrote: > This is pretty fantastic. I've enjoyed playing around with it. I'm glad you like it :) > One simple change that I think would add a lot is some color. More > specifically, the XO uses a two-tone (stroke & fill) color scheme as a > form of visual identity. ... > Another nice touch would be to make the eyes follow the carat while > typing, instead of remaining focused on the mouse Two great ideas. Adding color will be super easy. I can make a toggle between black/white and the user's colors. Is there a kid- friendly sugar or gtk color picker, like the box-of-crayons one on the Mac? That would let them play with the colors too. I'll see if I can get access to the carat location easily. > Finally, a subtle but > wonderfully effective technique that a professor of mine often used > for characters with eyes is to periodically return the pupils to the > center of the eyeball. This creates a sort of dialogue between the > character and the child, as it appears that the he is interested both > in the movement of the cursor and in the individual moving it. Neat! I want to make the eyes blink at random also. -josh ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: New activity: Speak
Hi Joshua, Can this or the Screen Reader project be adapted to reading content, > such as the children's picturebooks provided in the Library? (We would > presumably need a text file to go with each document.) We are working on a speech-server for providing all these features. Currently we are considering the api requirements for many activities that seem to have started using espeak. The speech-server will satisfactorily be able to handle requirements for speech synthesis for self-voicing activities, by wrapping the complexities of espeak connections etc. We had worked on a simple speech-server, however with the evolving requirements of many developers, we are going to restructure the api before making it available on the xo. In that same vein, would anybody be interested in creating a karaoke > activity? Same-language captioning of Bollywood musicals is claimed to > be the most effective literacy measure in India. Hey nice idea! > > In espeak, phoneme sets and orthographies can be added for any > > language. Do you support this? > I plan to experiment with calling espeak via their API but I will make > sure to avoid any limitation on the set of languages. I would like to get > callbacks for each phoneme while the voice is playing, so that I can shape > the mouth correctly for each one. If done well, this could be a nice visual > cue to help understand the voice. We will try and address your requirements of querying for available languages, callbacks and event info in the api that we will consider and design in the coming months. I would also have to rework how espeak is wired up to gstreamer. > Right now I have espeak write out a wav file and then I play that > back via the gst module. I wasn't able to get them piped together in > a reliable way. Specifically when I run espeak --stdout and then > attach that to a gst pipeline that starts with an fdsrc, it only > works once. I was not able to restart or rebuild a new pipeline to > speak another sentence. The only thing that I;d like to advise about is that you keep the structure modular so that once the speech-server is available (with all other functionality that is required) you dont have to make major changes in your activity. Best, Hemant ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: New activity: Speak
On Jan 10, 2008 12:05 PM, Joshua Minor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Jan 10, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Edward Cherlin wrote: > > > On Jan 10, 2008 1:27 AM, Joshua Minor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Hi everyone, > >>I made a new activity called Speak > > >> > >> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Speak > >> Also, if anyone has experience or ideas on how to get access to > >> espeak's per-phoneme timing data from python, please let me know. > >> > >> -josh > > > > Do you want to do that while running, or would a precomputed table > > meet your needs? > > I would like to get callbacks for each phoneme while the voice is > playing, so that I can shape the mouth correctly for each one. If > done well, this could be a nice visual cue to help understand the voice. Plus a new accessibility feature. The illiterate deaf who can read lips would be able to use the XO. Upstream would greatly appreciate that. At some point we could think about a matching cutaway view of the vocal tract for language learners. I would love to see you animate the Xhosa 'x' and 'q' clicks (See Miriam Makeba, The Click Song/Qongqotwane), and all of the different 'rhotic' sounds (flap r as in Japanese, trill as in Italian, hard retroflex as in southern New Jersey, Boston, German gurgle, etc.). "Izu zato 'aru' azu in Rondon, oru 'elu' azu in Loma?" "Ar-r-r-r-r-r-rivider-r-r-rci, R-r-roma..." If you haven't heard the south Jersey dialect, I can't convey it to you. You won't hear it on House MD, but you should. "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd." German, spoken, not sung. An uvular trill before a vowel. "Grün, alles grün, so rings und rund." Hey, wow, it's been done! Well, only the static positions on this site, but presumably there is more elsewhere. http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~danhall/phonetics/sammy.html INTERACTIVE SAGITTAL SECTION > I would also have to rework how espeak is wired up to gstreamer. > Right now I have espeak write out a wav file and then I play that > back via the gst module. I wasn't able to get them piped together in > a reliable way. Specifically when I run espeak --stdout and then > attach that to a gst pipeline that starts with an fdsrc, it only > works once. I was not able to restart or rebuild a new pipeline to > speak another sentence. > > -josh -- Edward Cherlin Earth Treasury: End Poverty at a Profit http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
