New Activity Proposal -- "Your voice on XO"

[Alex Escalona]

HI Josh,

Thank you for voicing your support! It's great to hear that there is general
interest out there for this type of activity.

I have to confess that I have not tried the existing process for adding a
new voice. However, I am aware of the efforts required to undergo such an
undertaking, and hope to make such endeavors more accessible for XO users
and their communities.

Can you share any experiences or knowledge that you might have on this
subject? I understand that you were involved in creating and maintaining the
"Speak" activity on the XO. As well, I have noted some interest in this
proposal on the devel list (e.g.,
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-February/011076.html). And of
course, I know that Hemant Goyal has done considerable work in forwarding
Speechd on the XO as a speech synthesis interface, as well as advancing
efforts in TTS in general.

Best,
Alex

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 10:07 PM, Joshua Minor <j at lux.vu> wrote:

> This is an awesome idea.  A couple of people have contacted me to ask how
> to add new voices to Speak.  It would be great to make this process easier.
>
> Have you actually tried the existing process for adding a voice?
>
> -josh
>
> On Apr 4, 2008, at 5:58 PM, Alex Escalona wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I just created a page on the OLPC wiki detailing my activity proposal--"Your
> voice on XO" <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Your_Voice_on_XO>. I hope to
> develop this activity via GSoC 2008. A brief abstract of my proposal
> follows.
>
> This is a proposal for the creation of a new activity for the XO that
> would advance localization efforts in TTS development, as well as promote
> the involvement of the local community overall. "Your voice on XO" would
> consist of a long-term, community-based project to build and/or further
> development of a synthetic voice for the language used locally (for more on
> synthetic-voice building, see http://www.festvox.org/bsv/p710.html, and
> http://espeak.sourceforge.net/add_language.html).
>
> This activity would entail integrating the voice-building capabilities of
> eSpeak <http://espeak.sourceforge.net/>, or perhaps Festival<http://festvox.org/festival/>,
> into Sugar on the XO, as well as working to facilitate synthetic-voice
> building in a classroom, or community setting (for an overall view of how
> the voice building process might proceed, see
> http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/emasters/summer_school_2005/tutorial3/tutorial.html
> ).
>
> Your feedback and comments are much appreciated!
>
> Best,
>
> Alex Escalona
> ("vergueishon" on OLPC wiki, IRC)
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>
>
>
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