Hi list, My first post here. This is pretty long so feel free to snip and mod the subject line as needed.
VmWare & Festival: I'm running Dapper under VmWare Server 1.01 (Win XP) and performed an alternate Ubuntu install. Audio works fine in Gnome but I get no speech in Gnopernicus. Of the two servers available in test-speech the second gives me an error and the first place corrupted audio sounding like bursts of white noise and other artifacts. Why is there no speech in Gnopernicus even though Gnome sound does work? What audio attributes does Festival have? I'm suspecting the audio artifacts might be either some issue within VmWare itself or some non standard audio format e.g. odd sampling rate used by Festival. I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me about troubleshooting Gnopernicus speech issues and running Festival in VmWare. Here are some extracts from test-speech: Attempting to activate OAFIID:GNOME_Speech_SynthesisDriver_Festival:proto0.3. Driver name: Festival GNOME Speech Driver Driver version: 0.3 Synthesizer name: Festival Speech Synthesis System Synthesizer Version: 1.4.3 <snip> This one plays corrupted audio. Attempting to activate OAFIID:GNOME_Speech_SynthesisDriver_Speech_Dispatcher:pro to0.3. Server could not be initialized. A reply I got in alt.comp.blind-users seems to indicate that the audio issue might be something introduced in VmWare Workstation 5 and the Server product line. The post is here (via Google): http://tinyurl.com/rcd5z I've also reported the issue, together with a sample wave file, on the VmWare Web fora but got no reply: http://tinyurl.com/hbk9m I went with the defaults during the OS install itself and the only customization I've done has been to enable assistive technology support and Gnopernicus in Gnome. I also ran all the 30 updates it recommended including apparently a new Linux kernel. I haven't found any useful audio options in VmWare or the GNoem audio applet itself. The guest machine's sound card is always an SB compatible PCI card which shows up as Ensoniq PCI audio within Linux. If Festival fails to work, VmWare offers a named pipe back to the Windows world from its serial port. Are there any simple speech APIs that Gnopernicus supports? If there are I suppose I could write a quick and dirty Perl script that sits at the other end of that named pipe waiting for input and passing it after some wrapping to a SAPI 5 OLE object in Windows. That means WIndows speaks the prompts in Gnome but I don't care which OS does it as long as it works, <smile>. VM Benefits: My method of installing Linux was pretty involved but has been working quite well actually. That is I ran the alternate Dapper ISo selecting the blindness boot option and giving the parameter console=ttyS0. That guest machine's serial port is a virtual Windows serial port whose connected to the TeraTerm terminal emulator. I can then use my screen reader and magnifier, Supernova, to read all terminal output. Although it required some configuration, I kind of like my current assistive technology setup. It means I can use a screen reader straight from the boot up, regardless of which distro I'm trying to run or whether sound works in the first place. As VmWare is a virtual machine I can reinstall everything with ease, take snapshots and even use full-screen magnification and color changing (invert RGB) features provided by Supernova. How's Gnome magnification today? The last time I tried a couple of years back it couldn't do full-screen magnification or magnify the area covered by the magnifier window. Anyway, within my VmWare setup Braille works directly, too, and I find I can listen to formant based speech synths like Orpheus or ViaVoice twice as fast as I can Festival which is a huge productivity boost. Although I do all of my computing in English, I need FInnish speech support on a daily basis for e-mail, e-books and such. I've never seen the Suopuhe addition to Festival being integrated in any Linux distro. More info at: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/suopuhe/english.shtml The reason why I'd like to get Festival working would be to have some spoken output in Gnome, too, in addition to the magnification. I'm still primarily a speech user. I've got a page about my sight here: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/sight.html And another comparing synths like Festival and Orpheus: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/reviews_of_speech_synths.html I'm considering taking part in a Unix programming course which is about GUIs so I'd need to get this stuff solved before I can attend. I've tried half a dozen distroes over the years and in none of them the assistive technology has worked straight away. Most of my Linux experience has been trying to set up them in one distro or another, rather than actually using and enjoying the OS. In contrast, although it might be an unfair comparison, VoiceOver works straight away which is a great feeling if you are a newbie in some OS and pondering whether to give it a test drive. CLI and Gnome Annoyances: Some of this last section is slightly OT. It also serves as a member intro, though, so it's stuff I would have said sooner or later. Ever since having seen my first GUI, I've been a GUI guy despite being legally blind. I value the command line and scripting occasionally but enjoy immensly the hotkey driven, mnemonic and simple GUI when wearing my user hat, period. It's gotten up to the point whre I'm afraid to delete stuff without an undo mechanism like the Trash and gripe about commands whose names or long switches would be considered non-intuitive if they were names in, say, Java code. I guess you get the picture as to my computing habits and attitude. I should add I consider myself a power user in the MS OSes (DOS since DrDos 4 and Winblows since 95) and like tweaking only if it has got some true significance e.g. shortening the tab order or less latency in soft synths. The few text-oriented Unixisms I like are Perl, I'm willing to take complexity in programmer mode, and regular expressions for navigating text files. Another point is that the command line isn't always that speech friendly, either. AT the risk of a tangent, ls -l output is extremely speech hostile as it doesn't place the columns in the order of signifnicance, for example. Similarly bad are man pages, as they wrap in mid-word and trip up the pronounciation in line-based speech synths. I do realize these tools are not set up for speech users by default but it would be nice if more configuration options or accessibility scripts would be supplied to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. As far as shells go, I think Fish might be the one for me. Is it any good with speech? Here's some info: http://arstechnica.com/articles/columns/linux/linux-20051218.ars/2 Lastly, there are some accessibility things I'd really like to change in Gnome. To my knowledge none of the high contrast themes offers a good contrast between the dialog, text field and button backgrounds. This is extremely important to me in getting the big picture without magnification. An example of the core rules I use when doing GUi themes for myself is my Accessible Winamp Skin page at: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/winamp_access.html For another working example, here's a CSS file I use to override all colors on the Web on WIntel platforms: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/ie_css.html Again my Linux theming experiences are a couple of years old. Is there already a graphical theme editor for Gnome which has a real time preview? I find that I don't often get the look right the first time so a GUI would save lots of time and nerves compared to handcoding in XML or some Gnome specific mini language. The last time I tried setting up this in Debian I found no proper docs about the format, and decided to wait until they've got a GUI for managing the GUI, like KDE does. Hope I've been outlining my Festival problem clearly and that my depressing experiences and attitudes about LInux haven't boared you to death. PS: I wouldn't want to start yet another holy war about GUis and CLIs or any other such topic. I just decided to mention right away I don't feel comfortable with CLIs and am aiming for a GUI experience if at all possible. OS X is high on my gotta get OS list. -- With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/ -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
