From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Greylist: delayed 453 seconds by postgrey-1.34 at befuddled; Thu, 09 May 2013 20:45:28 EDT Received: from mail.insightbb.com (smtp1.insight.synacor.com [208.47.185.23]) by befuddled.reisers.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9185F1EF6F2 for ; Thu, 9 May 2013 20:45:28 -0400 (EDT) X_CMAE_Category: 0,0 Undefined,Undefined X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=H+dZMpki c=1 sm=0 a=WdH4fYfIsQ66nRIvHS2yqQ==:17 a=QTFOEh9fAJMA:10 a=FGoY7Nf8KOYA:10 a=jLN7EqiLvroA:10 a=kj9zAlcOel0A:10 a=9YQ-1ebCAAAA:8 a=T_WVM9WxMV0A:10 a=D_SImJ8KAAAA:8 a=x-zicot5uCgpkgcnA04A:9 a=CjuIK1q_8ugA:10 a=WdH4fYfIsQ66nRIvHS2yqQ==:117 X-CM-Score: 0 X-Scanned-by: Cloudmark Authority Engine Authentication-Results: smtp01.insight.synacor.com smtp.mail=ratguy@insightbb.com; spf=softfail; sender-id=softfail Authentication-Results: smtp01.insight.synacor.com header.from=ratguy@insightbb.com; sender-id=softfail Authentication-Results: smtp01.insight.synacor.com smtp.user=ratguy; auth=pass (LOGIN) Received-SPF: softfail (smtp01.insight.synacor.com: transitional domain insightbb.com does not designate 74.132.255.13 as permitted sender) Received: from [74.132.255.13] ([74.132.255.13:59540] helo=[192.168.0.143]) by mail.insightbb.com (envelope-from ) (ecelerity 2.2.3.49 r(42060/42061)) with ESMTPSA (cipher=AES256-SHA) id 91/19-23602-0614C815; Thu, 09 May 2013 20:37:52 -0400 Message-ID: <518C416D.3080309@insightbb.com> Date: Thu, 09 May 2013 20:38:05 -0400 From: Jayson Smith User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130328 Thunderbird/17.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." Subject: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux 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> <518C2BCC.3010003@tysdomain.com> In-Reply-To: <518C2BCC.3010003@tysdomain.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 00:45:29 -0000 Hi, If the source code for Eloquence is truly lost, imho that is totally absurd. Especially since it at one time was IBM TTS or Via Voice or whatever. I mean, a big huge company like that doesn't just go around losing source code. You know somebody, somewhere, almost certainly has a copy of some version of the source. As for me, I don't like Espeak either. I personally think Eloquence is the best thing out there other than good old DECtalk. And no, don't get me on a rant about what Force Computers and Fonix did to that poor thing! When I say DECtalk, I mean DECtalk 4.3 at the latest. Jayson On 5/9/2013 7:05 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote: > >but I guess that's no different from what Microsoft has been > >doing for years > yeah... totally. Now if you had any clue what you were talking about > short of the usual windows bashing on a Linux list, we might actually > be able to take you seriously. > > Also I honestly see nothing wrong with voxen/eloquence. Sure it is > outdated and has problems, but I prefer it to the harsh headcold sound > of ESpeak. It's a matter of preference that doesn't exactly set voxen > or espeak above one or the other. > On 5/9/2013 4:57 PM, Kyle wrote: >> 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/ > >