From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from opera.rednote.net (opera.rednote.net [IPv6:2600:3c03::f03c:91ff:fe70:e783]) by befuddled.reisers.ca (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4A3401EF73C for ; Fri, 10 May 2013 14:24:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from concerto.rednote.net ([IPv6:2601:a:3780:1f:be5f:f4ff:fe45:6a6e]) by opera.rednote.net (8.14.7/8.14.6) with ESMTP id r4AIOiNJ025078 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Fri, 10 May 2013 18:24:44 GMT Received: from concerto.rednote.net (concerto.rednote.net [127.0.0.1]) by concerto.rednote.net (8.14.7/8.14.6) with ESMTP id r4AIOilL027083 for ; Fri, 10 May 2013 14:24:44 -0400 Received: (from janina@localhost) by concerto.rednote.net (8.14.7/8.14.7/Submit) id r4AIOi2J027082 for speakup@linux-speakup.org; Fri, 10 May 2013 14:24:44 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: concerto.rednote.net: janina set sender to janina@rednote.net using -f Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 14:24:44 -0400 From: Janina Sajka To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux Message-ID: <20130510182444.GE3601@concerto.rednote.net> References: <8021.1367479350@ccs.covici.com> <518A5508.8020502@gmail.com> <518A6931.6070806@math.wisc.edu> <25752.1368029641@ccs.covici.com> <518A9206.8090008@math.wisc.edu> <518B4FCB.6090003@baechler.net> <518BAC38.8060708@math.wisc.edu> <20130509193744.GJ2324@bmcginty.hopto.org> <518C29C9.90704@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <518C29C9.90704@gmail.com> X-Operating-System: Linux concerto.rednote.net 3.8.11-200.fc18.x86_64 X-PGP-Key: http://rednote.net/JaninaSajka_gpg_key.html User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-BeenThere: speakup@linux-speakup.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list Reply-To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." List-Id: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 18:24:48 -0000 I don't use Voxin. I do still use TTSynth with Speakup. The compatibility library you need is available on Fedora 18 as: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-144.1.i686 PS; With Orca I use speech-dispatcherd and espeak. I have to use a second physical audio device for this. I cannot get these two to share the same alsa device. And, I do need to permanently terminate pulseaudio with extreme prejudice. That's about it. The Fedora GDM still isn't supporting talking login--don't get me started talking about that, though! Firefox, currently at release 20, works wonderfully well. It's useful to use recent Firefox releases because the a11y code in FF is actively being updated these days Janina Kyle writes: > According to Brandon McGinty-Carroll: > # As I recall, voxen requires /dev/dsp or somesuch ancient sound API. > > As far as I know, this is correct, but it's a lot worse than that. Not > only does Voxin require an ancient sound API, but it also requires > ancient C libraries in order to function. The source code is either lost > or is otherwise unavailable even to those who would maintain it, so it > can't even be rebuilt against the latest C libraries or even get any of > its numerous bugs fixed. It still crashes on words like c a e s u r e, > which according to Google is a bitcoin client written in Python, and is > also a rather common username on some non-blindness related forums. It > also crashes on a rather common OCR error when recognizing the word > Wednesday. I googled that one as well, and turns out it is a very common > OCR scanning error, especially when scanning newspapers. I was > especially seeing it in scanned newspaper archives from the late 1800's > and early 1900's. There are also reports of random crashes that cause > Voxin and other speech synthesis engines with the exact same codebase > but different names to randomly kill the screen reader, and there is > nothing anyone can do about it, because the source code is not available > or is lost. Worse still is the fact that many companies are actually > making a profit from licensing something so outdated, broken and > unstable, but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been > doing for years . It may fall on deaf ears for some reason, but > my recommendation is to avoid Voxin and all the other voices like it. > Use eSpeak, because it ships with most distros and just works. If you > don't like the way eSpeak sounds, you can still get festival working, > and Festival is capable of running some amazing free voices. There's > also Pico, which is now supported natively in speech-dispatcher. All > these voices sound better and work better than Voxin, which literally > makes my head hurt. > ~Kyle > http://kyle.tk/ > -- > "Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?" > Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie" > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup@linux-speakup.org > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.443.300.2200 sip:janina@asterisk.rednote.net Email: janina@rednote.net Linux Foundation Fellow Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup: http://a11y.org The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Chair, Protocols & Formats http://www.w3.org/wai/pf Indie UI http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/