[laptop-accessibility] [sugar] An Update about Speech Synthesis for Sugar

[Samuel Klein]

I'd like to see an eSpeak literacy project written up -- Once we have
a play button, with text highlighting, we have most of the pieces to
make a great read + speak platform that can load in texts and
highlight words/sentences as they are being read.  Ping had a nice
mental model for this a while back.

SJ


On Feb 18, 2008 9:22 AM, Hemant Goyal <goyal.hemant at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It s great to see many other developers sharing the idea we have been trying
> to implement right within the Sugar Environment.
>
> We have been working on integrating speech-synthesis into Sugar for quite
> some time now. You can check out our ideas here :
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader
>
> We are also documenting all our ideas and requirements with respect to
> Speech Synthesis in this Requirements Analysis Document here :
> http://www.nsitonline.in/hemant/stuff/Speech%20Synthesis%20on%20XO%20-%20Requirements%20Analysis%20v0.3.5.pdf
>
> It outlines some of our immediate as well as long term goals wrt
> speech-synthesis on the XO. Your ideas, comments and suggestions are
> welcome.
>
> I'd like to update the list about our progress:
>
> speech-dispatcher has been selected as a speech synthesis server which will
> accept all incoming speech synthesis requests from any sugar activity
> (example: Talk N Type, Speak etc)
> speech-dispatcher provides a very simple to use API and client specific
> configuration management.So whats causing the delays?
>
> speech-dispatcher is not packaged as an RPM for Fedora, so at present I am
> mostly making a RPM package so that it can be accepted by the Fedora
> community and ultimately be dropped into the OLPC Builds. You can track the
> progress here : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=432259 I am not
> an expert at RPM packaging and hence its taking some time at my end. I'd
> welcome anyone to assist me and help speed up the process.
> dotconf packages which speech-dispatcher is being packaged by my team mate
> Assim. You can check its progress here :
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433253
>  Some immediate tasks that we plan to carry out once speech-dispatcher is
> packaged and dropped into the OLPC builds are :
>
> Provide the "much needed" play button, with text highlight features as
> discussed by Edward.
> Port an AI Chatbot to the XO and hack it enough to make it speak to the
> child :).
> Encourage other developers to make use of speech-synthesis to make their
> activities as lively and child friendly as possible :)
> Explore orca and other issues to make the XO more friendly for
> blind/low-vision students
> @James : We envision that speech-synthesis will surely get integrated with
> Read in due time. I think it would be great if maybe Gutenberg text could be
> loaded right from Read only?
>
> > I was not planning on anything so fancy.  Basically, I was frustrated
> > that I had a device that would be wonderfully suited to reading
> > Gutenberg etexts and no suitable program to do it with.  I have written
> > such an Activity and am putting the finishing touches on it.  As I see
> > it, the selling points of the Activity will be that it can display
> > etexts one page at a time in a readable proportional font and remember
> > what page you were on when you resume the activity.  The child can find
> > his book using the Gutenberg site, save the Zip file version to the
> > Journal, rename it, resume it, and start reading.  It will also be good
> > sample code for new Activity developers to look at, even children,
> > because it is easy to understand yet it does something that is actually
> > useful.  I have written another Activity which lets you browse through a
> > bunch of image files stored in a Zip file, and it also would be good
> > sample code for a new developer, as well as being useful.
>
> Warm Regards,
> Hemant
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar mailing list
> Sugar at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
>
>