I totally agree that we need to work on FoS alternatives to the IBMtts; but for now for some languages voxin is the most viable alternative. I don't want to see the day where folks must keep using old operating system(s) just to have an understandable voice in their language, but this day is at hand, or close to it. As I said in another msg having more than one option is also important both because what is good for one person isn't for another and because just feeling that one has a choice makes people feel better. The pico voices I tried in Windows were certainly equalized for phone speakers, and for most people with "nnormal" hearing found the tone quite muffled. I tried English pico a few times for minutes on my Linux installation(s) and think it was the same or similar; but one would think adding a bit of mid-high pitch in to the voices to improve clarity. The other drawback to svox was how it sounded at relatively high word per minute rates, but my brief experiments under Linux were pretty responsive at voice rates fast enough to be practical in production use for, I think, most users. Bottom line: WE should all try and do what ever we can to advance work on Linux voice alternatives asap. I wasn't so impressed with openmari, but it seems that many found this quite listenable and saw/see promise...The more the merrier. -- B.H.
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 09:13:19AM -0400, Kyle wrote: > According to Fernando Botelho: > # Well, since Voxin is no longer for sale, this might be a good time for > # us to get started on improving espeak in Spanish. > > Googling and looking on the website, I don't think it's no longer for > sale, but it's so badly outdated, and takes so much ancient code to run, > that it might as well be no longer for sale. It will only get harder and > harder to run Voxin as hardware and software become newer. It's like > putting that old floppy drive in new computer after new computer until > it eventually no longer fits, even with adaptors. Eventually, if you > still want to use your old floppy collection, you will need to move the > files to something like a flash drive or purchase a USB floppy drive. > Voxin is much the same, in that eventually people who are currently > making it work will need to improve the more maintained bits of code > such as eSpeak, because eventually, all the adapted and ancient > libraries in the world won't make it work. The website indicates that it > just uses an old C++ library, but there's no way that old library will > work in the future, as it's already well over 10 years old. Eventually > it will become incompatible with the entire system bit by bit. I said > all that to say that Voxin may still be for sale, but it's much more > profitable for the community to work to improve eSpeak, SVox Pico, > Festival, Flite or any of the other freedom synthesizers available with > source code that can be freely modified and improved than it will ever > be to keep trying and trying to make Voxin or any other packaged version > of this speech synthesizer run just a little longer. > ~Kyle > http:/kyle.tk/ > -- > "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?" > Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie" > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility -- Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list Ubuntu-accessibility@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility
