Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Janina Sajka]

 > Other speech cards that do not communicate to the PC over a serial port but
 > instead talk over the internal bus, e.g. the Dectalk PC, require a 
 > device  driver that makes the card appear as a serial device to linux.

This is one solid reason why I would prefer a Doubletalk. I don't know 
enough about Linux to know what the Doubletalk would need under Linux, 
but the Doubletalk needs no drivers whatsoever under DOS (and in a DOS 
VDM under OS/2). It is simply addressed as LPT3. End of configuration. 
Simple and tidy. Also much more affordable.

			Janina Sajka, Director
			Information Systems Department
			American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

janina@afb.org

Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Ken Perry]

Double talk would still need a driver in Linux unless you are talking
about the double talk serial and the lite  talk serial.  

Ken /whistler

On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Janina Sajka wrote:

>  > Other speech cards that do not communicate to the PC over a serial port but
>  > instead talk over the internal bus, e.g. the Dectalk PC, require a 
>  > device  driver that makes the card appear as a serial device to linux.
> 
> This is one solid reason why I would prefer a Doubletalk. I don't know 
> enough about Linux to know what the Doubletalk would need under Linux, 
> but the Doubletalk needs no drivers whatsoever under DOS (and in a DOS 
> VDM under OS/2). It is simply addressed as LPT3. End of configuration. 
> Simple and tidy. Also much more affordable.
> 
> 			Janina Sajka, Director
> 			Information Systems Department
> 			American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
> 
> janina@afb.org
> 
> ---
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Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Janina Sajka]

I'm talking about the DoubleTalk internal which installs on an ISA bus. 
That's the one that takes its data at LPT3. What kind of driver would 
that need?

Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Ken Perry]

It would need a simple driver to tell linux how to talk to the card all
cards in linux need these drivers for example how does linux know what pin
to send text to  the double talk on?  The answer is it has no clue that is
what the driver does it simply gives you a file to send and recive
information about the card or for the card to and the driver places or
gets the info you are dealing with.

Ken /whistler

On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Janina Sajka wrote:

> I'm talking about the DoubleTalk internal which installs on an ISA bus. 
> That's the one that takes its data at LPT3. What kind of driver would 
> that need?
> 
> 
> ---
> Send your message for blinux-list to blinux-list@redhat.com
> Blinux software archive at ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
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> To unsubscribe send mail to blinux-list-request@redhat.com
> with subject line: unsubscribe
> 

Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Kenneth Albanowski]

On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Ken Perry wrote:

> It would need a simple driver to tell linux how to talk to the card all
> cards in linux need these drivers for example how does linux know what pin
> to send text to  the double talk on?  The answer is it has no clue that is
> what the driver does it simply gives you a file to send and recive
> information about the card or for the card to and the driver places or
> gets the info you are dealing with.

If the DoubleTalk internal card exactly mimics the LPT3 interface in
hardware, no driver is needed. It looks and _is_, to all intents and
purposes, a printer. Just set up Linux for lpt3.

--
Kenneth Albanowski (kjahds@kjahds.com, CIS: 70705,126)

Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Janina Sajka]

Anyone wishing to take on writing a driver for Dubltalk should know it 
exists in a serial as well as an internal incarnation. For my money 
it's clearly a best buy in synthesizers. At $315 for the serial 
version, you could have three for the price of a DEC Talk.

tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Patrick Legg]

Is there anyplace that has a collection of tclx drivers for emacspeak?

Sure, the programming effort is supposed to be small, but an archive of 
drivers that are even halfway working sounds like a good idea to me.

Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[Jim Rebman]

> Is there anyplace that has a collection of tclx drivers for emacspeak?
> 
> Sure, the programming effort is supposed to be small, but an archive of 
> drivers that are even halfway working sounds like a good idea to me.

No, there is no archive of drivers because, there has been no motivation 
thus far to develop drivers for anything but the serial DecTalks and the 
software DecTalk that runs on the DECAlphas.  When developing drivers, 
keep in mind that these synthesizers are interfaced through the serial 
port (I'm not really sure how the software DECTalk works), because there 
are no linux/unix drivers for internal synthesizers.  So, if people are 
to develop drivers for internal synthesizers they must also develop a 
low-level driver for the card, and this will more than likely have to be 
at the kernel level.  There is one guy who is developing such a low-level 
driver for the internal DECTalk, but as he is working on it in his spare 
time, he makes no promises as to its release date.

So...  great idea, now if somebody with the motivation and the skill 
wants to undertake such an effort, I am sure it will be greatly 
appreciated by the community at large.  Keep in mind that this is the 
spirit of linux, and that its success comes from the fact that people 
support it because they believe in a alternative to the Microsoft way of 
thinking.

-- Jim Rebman <jrebman@netcom.com>

Re: tclx drivers for emacspeak

[T. V. Raman]

JR> No, there is no archive of drivers because, there has been no motivation
JR>thus far to develop drivers for anything but the serial DecTalks and the
JR>software DecTalk that runs on the DECAlphas.

The emacspeak mailing list is being archived thanks to the list owner Greg
Priest-Dorman.
If people post work in progress drivers there that would provide a good point
to share common work.


JR>When developing drivers, keep in mind that these synthesizers are interfaced
JR>through the serial port (I'm not really sure how the software DECTalk
JR>works), because there are no linux/unix drivers for internal synthesizers.
JR>So, if people are to develop drivers for internal synthesizers they must
JR>also develop a low-level driver for the card, and this will more than
JR>likely have to be at the kernel level.  There is one guy who is developing
JR>such a low-level driver for the internal DECTalk, but as he is working on
JR>it in his spare time, he makes no promises as to its release date.


Let me clarify some of the issues raised by Jim above:

The dectalk Express and many other serial speech synthesizers will require no
more than the tcl script analogous to dtk-exp for emacspeak to work.

Other speech cards that do not communicate to the PC over a serial port but
instead talk over the internal bus, e.g. the Dectalk PC, require a 
device  driver that makes the card appear as a serial device to linux.
This peice of work would have to be done for making the card usable by *any*
linux program that wishes to talk.
This is the spare time work mentioned above.

As for the software Dectalk on the alpha, it ships as a callable C library and
while at DEC I wrote an enhanced version of TCL that talked directly to this
library.
So using this modified TCL I could then write a simple tcl script dtk-soft
--the software Dectalk analog of dtk-exp to enable emacspeak interface
seamlessly with the software Dectalk.

So in summary:

there are two pieces to supporting a generic speech device on linux with
emacspeak

1) First make the device visible to linux; if it is a serial card, you need to
do nothing --since you can just talk to /dev/ttyS0 or wherever the device is
connected

2) Once the device is visible implement a program (to date this has been done
as tcl scripts) that watches its standard input for a given set of commands,
and sends the appropriate information to the speech device on receiving these
commands.

tclx proved an expedient way of writing the above; there is nothing to prevent
someone writing similar programs in C, C++, perl, java or whatever your
favorite language of the week happens to be.

--Raman

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

      Adobe Systems                 Tel: 1 (408) 536 3945   (W14-129)
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