From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: by befuddled.reisers.ca (Postfix, from userid 65534) id C56071EF95A; Sun, 6 Dec 2015 05:08:39 -0500 (EST) Received: from dragnet.batsupport.com (dragnet.batsupport.com [176.9.155.71]) by befuddled.reisers.ca (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 484CE1EF958 for ; Sun, 6 Dec 2015 05:08:38 -0500 (EST) Received: from [192.168.0.133] (ip98-176-22-138.sd.sd.cox.net [98.176.22.138]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: bats@batsupport.com) by dragnet.batsupport.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id BA7961F00572 for ; Sun, 6 Dec 2015 02:08:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: software speech To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." References: <20151205035718.GA21120@qlf.suddenlink.net> <5662C2E3.1000509@baechler.net> From: Tony Baechler Organization: Baechler Access Technology Services Message-ID: <56640914.1090509@baechler.net> Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2015 02:08:20 -0800 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Bogosity: Ham, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.000000, version=1.2.4 X-BeenThere: speakup@linux-speakup.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2015 10:08:39 -0000 On 12/5/2015 10:46 AM, Karen Lewellen wrote: > but why? > There are many hardware synthesizers with far better voice quality. Even > models that were available in USB. > why on earth should anyone be expected to have poor quality speech when the > tools exist otherwise? > Not that I am a windows user, or a Linux one either of course smiles. > Kare Hi, I couldn't agree with you more. It makes good sense to me. I like my DECtalk Express and that's part of why I haven't switched to NVDA. I think you should ask the developers. It wouldn't be hard to implement serial synth support. Maybe the Speakup drivers could be adapted, but NVDA is written in Python so probably not. As mentioned, I looked at the Braille driver and it didn't look too difficult. The only thing I can think of is each hardware synth is different and manuals are hard to come by, not to mention that most people don't use them anymore. Lots of machines don't come with serial ports. I don't know about USB synths. Unlike with software synths, every hardware synth has its own sets of commands, voices, pitch, rate and volume settings, etc. With SAPI, it's a standard, so no matter what voice you're using, the programming is the same. Finally, in the old days, computers weren't powerful enough to run software speech effectively, but that's no longer the case. Now, for most people, it makes more sense to not carry around an external synth or take up a PCI slot when a good sound card and speakers do the same thing. Now, software speech is very responsive in most cases.