[sugar] New multilingual dictionary activity

[Jameson "Chema" Quinn]

For the XO, it would be great if dictionaries were *not* constant databases.
Many of the countries where the XO is/will be deployed have local languages
for which good free electronic dictionaries very much do not exist.
Moreover, even in places where the local language is digital-age, creating a
schoolwide jargon file would be a great project for involving the kids.

I know that, if the University of Southern Denmark and the dead author's
daughter ever finish giving me CC-like rights to a multilanguage Mayan
dictionary, a good wiktionary-like activity would become *the* major
argument for adopting the XO in Guatemala. (the dictionary is large, but
antiquated - it would need to be user-extensible to be useful).

I am very happy that a dictionary activity exists, and I know that the
programming work for a user-modifiable one is several times as much as just
a static one. So I am not belittling Chris's accomplishment, just saying
that tying it to a static database is not the direction I would advise.

Jameson

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 3:01 AM, Assim Deodia <assim.deodia at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 3/10/08, Hemant Goyal <goyal.hemant at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > > Next steps:
> > >
> > >   * I have a "Speak" button that I'd like to hook up to espeak with
> > > the
> > >     appropriate accent loaded.  Josh, any interest in helping to get
> > >     that working?  Should I just wait for the speech server?
> >
> >
> > The speech dispatcher API is what you can use for the speech synthesis.
> > The python API is accessible here :
> > http://cvs.freebsoft.org/repository/speechd/src/python/speechd/client.py?view=markup
> >
> > I am still trying to get the speech dispatcher and its dependencies
> > packaged for Fedora :\. And that is the only reason why the speech server is
> > still not present on the XO :(. I really request an expert to look into this
> > and help speed up the work.
> >
> > In the long run, we plan to explore other Text to Speech engines other
> > than eSpeak (because of voice quality issues). So coupling your app with
> > eSpeak is not so sensible when you can directly use speech-dispatcher for
> > all testing.
> >
> > I have a few unapproved speech-dispatcher packages here:
> > http://www.nsitonline.in/hemant/stuff/speechd-rpm/
> >
> > You'll need dotconf packages to install speech dispatcher. Perhaps Assim
> > can help you get a *usable* dotconf pacakge.
> >
>
> You can get dotconf RPM's from
>
>
> http://nsitonline.in/assim/stuffs/olpc/dotconf/dotconf-devel-1.0.13-6.fc7.i386.rpm
>
> http://nsitonline.in/assim/stuffs/olpc/dotconf/dotconf-debuginfo-1.0.13-6.fc7.i386.rpm
>
> http://nsitonline.in/assim/stuffs/olpc/dotconf/dotconf-1.0.13-6.fc7.i386.rpm
>
> These RPM's are clean to use with only some minor bugs regarding Fedora
> Guidelines. We would really appreciate some help in process of review
> request to get both the packages
> (speech-dispatcher and dotconf) into OLPC build soon.
>
>
> I'd gladly hook your activity to speech dispatcher and make it self
> > voicing _once_ speechd gets accepted in the OLPC build.
> >
> > Thanks!
> > Hemant
> >
>
>
> --
> Regards
> Assim
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>
>
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