From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from homiemail-a25.g.dreamhost.com (caiajhbdccac.dreamhost.com [208.97.132.202]) by befuddled.reisers.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2606D1EF723 for ; Fri, 10 May 2013 11:31:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from homiemail-a25.g.dreamhost.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by homiemail-a25.g.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 44637678085 for ; Fri, 10 May 2013 08:30:56 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=raspberryvi.org; h= message-id:date:from:reply-to:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; s= raspberryvi.org; bh=foRPVKuM0PxONdIcZA1pzLhWlCo=; b=HGuTcPXnSdw9 0KeBUFnwzKt38hx5DH6oB86Nb8cT2kiO3Nvp8lVNNgc8tgp7TrdjRU2UPHYM8646 ScHNmula4hZg0ARE/1vyR9FBcmtl8TyhYkWQhhUxt6twYmmp37d1VmfPGGGT3LSN dvtKDlAd3YTgpNCu8dMAhMTzcMXRAX4= Received: from [192.168.1.80] (host81-135-25-129.range81-135.btcentralplus.com [81.135.25.129]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: mike@raspberryvi.org) by homiemail-a25.g.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id AB55A678098 for ; Fri, 10 May 2013 08:30:37 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <518D129B.3040709@raspberryvi.org> Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 16:30:35 +0100 From: Mike Ray 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@linux-speakup.org 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> <518D0B3A.7000302@math.wisc.edu> In-Reply-To: <518D0B3A.7000302@math.wisc.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: speakup@linux-speakup.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list Reply-To: mike@raspberryvi.org, "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 15:31:11 -0000 I listen to espeak for twelve or more hours a day and most of that time I'm concentrating on what I'm doing, not on how fluffy and cute the voice sounds. Mike On 10/05/2013 15:59, John G. Heim wrote: > As someone who uses voxin 8 to 10 hours a day, my opinion is that the > problems you mention below are minor compared to the clarity and > responsiveness of voxin. > > It only costs six bucks. If you have to listen to your workstation for > 8 to 10 hours a day, it's well worth it. > > > > > > n 05/09/13 17:57, 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/ >> > -- Michael A. Ray Analyst/Programmer Witley, Surrey, South-east UK Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi? Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/ From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers