<div class="gmail_quote">Hi,<br><br>It s great to see many other developers sharing the idea we have been trying to implement right within the Sugar Environment.<br><br>We have been working on integrating speech-synthesis into Sugar for quite some time now. You can check out our ideas here : <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader</a><br>
<br>We are also documenting all our ideas and requirements with respect to Speech Synthesis in this Requirements Analysis Document here : <a href="http://www.nsitonline.in/hemant/stuff/Speech%20Synthesis%20on%20XO%20-%20Requirements%20Analysis%20v0.3.5.pdf">http://www.nsitonline.in/hemant/stuff/Speech%20Synthesis%20on%20XO%20-%20Requirements%20Analysis%20v0.3.5.pdf</a><br>
<br>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.<br><br>I'd like to update the list about our progress:<br><ol><li>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)</li>
<li>speech-dispatcher provides a very simple to use API and client specific configuration management.</li></ol>So whats causing the delays?<br><ol><li>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 : <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=432259">https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=432259</a> 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.</li>
<li>dotconf packages which speech-dispatcher is being packaged by my team mate Assim. You can check its progress here : <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433253">https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433253</a><br>
</li></ol>Some immediate tasks that we plan to carry out once speech-dispatcher is packaged and dropped into the OLPC builds are :<br><ol><li>Provide the "much needed" play button, with text highlight features as discussed by Edward.</li>
<li>Port an AI Chatbot to the XO and hack it enough to make it speak to the child :).<br></li><li>Encourage other developers to make use of speech-synthesis to make their activities as lively and child friendly as possible :)</li>
<li>Explore orca and other issues to make the XO more friendly for blind/low-vision students<br></li></ol>@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?<br>
<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I was not planning on anything so fancy. Basically, I was frustrated<br>that I had a device that would be wonderfully suited to reading<br>
Gutenberg etexts and no suitable program to do it with. I have written<br>such an Activity and am putting the finishing touches on it. As I see<br>it, the selling points of the Activity will be that it can display<br>etexts one page at a time in a readable proportional font and remember<br>
what page you were on when you resume the activity. The child can find<br>his book using the Gutenberg site, save the Zip file version to the<br>Journal, rename it, resume it, and start reading. It will also be good<br>
sample code for new Activity developers to look at, even children,<br>because it is easy to understand yet it does something that is actually<br>useful. I have written another Activity which lets you browse through a<br>
bunch of image files stored in a Zip file, and it also would be good<br>sample code for a new developer, as well as being useful.</blockquote></div><br>Warm Regards,<br>Hemant<br>