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Edward,<br>
<br>
Ubuntu packages are already available for speech-dispatcher, espeak,
and festival, so it isn't difficult to set up a demo. You can use
apt-get. You would have to modify a configuration file to use the
espeak module (not espeak-generic) and you would have to start
speech-dispatcher by hand before doing the demo. There is a way to get
it started automatically, but I never bothered to find out what it is.
The instructions on the wiki are *close* to being right. Just
substitute using the espeak module for espeak-generic and don't bother
modifying the espeak config file.<br>
<br>
Hemant's RPMs will be specifically for the XO. Having special RPM's
for the XO is desireable because we don't have a lot of disk space to
work with and the usual package for speech-dispatcher brings in
festival and other stuff that wouldn't be needed. This isn't a problem
for ubuntu or debian running on a regular PC.<br>
<br>
I don't think current speech software is up to saying "wound around the
wound" yet. I've tested with with "Thuvia, Maid of Mars", "Edison's
Conquest of Mars", and "Triplanetary" and I've been impressed with how
well the software deals with made-up words like you find in science
fiction ("Dusar", "Ptarth"), but I've also heard it pronounce
"micrometer" as "micro meter". For a kid learning to read I think it
should be OK. But we have to have realistic expectations. I would
love for the XO to sound like Hal 9000 ("What do you think you're
doing, Dave?") but I'll settle for Colossus The Forbin Project, which
is pretty much what it sounds like.<br>
<br>
I've thought a bit more about highlighting for languages that don't
split words. I convert my text one page at a time to SSML, using
whitespace, but it should be possible to do just the oppposite: accept
a document already in SSML and convert it to plain text for display.
That way actual humans could figure out where the words split.<br>
<br>
Hemant was going to create a control panel for speech-dispatcher that
allows you to set speech rate, voice used, etc. I was planning on
using that so I didn't have to provide those options in my Activity.
If that doesn't work out for some reason I was thinking of swiping one
of the toolbars in the Speak activity and modifying that.
Speech-dispatcher by default speaks very quickly, which I think is the
preference for visually impaired people. I slowed it down quite a
bit. Somehow or other this needs to be adjustable. Plus I need to get
pause and resume working.<br>
<br>
James Simmons<br>
<br>
<br>
Edward Cherlin wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mide574f6eb0806100307j56f944fdrd0a294357900a1d1@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hemant Goyal is working on creating RPMs for speech-dispatcher and will
be updating the instructions on the wiki.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Is anybody interested in making the Debian/Ubuntu packages? This would
be one of my favorite demos.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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