speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

[Willem van der Walt]

Hello,
I have a notebook with software speech using the programs in the 
subject-line.
In speech-dispatcher, I have two modules configured: flite and a generic 
module used for afrikaans speech.  I want to be able to switch languages 
on the fly. 
Is there a way to make speechd-up either directly change the 
speech-dispatcher module, or change the speech-dispatcher language, 
hopefully
causing the correct module to be activated?
TIA
Willem


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Re: speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Hi Willem,

The speech-dispatcher documentation indicates that it is not possible to 
change modules on the fly, so there would be no way it could be done by 
speakup through speechd-up at present. The documentation is in the 
"info" system: type "info speechd-up" or "info speech-dispatcher" for 
the details. 

HTH,
Chuck

-- 
The Moon is New
But you can still get downloads from http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh

Re: speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

[Hynek Hanke,,,]

> The speech-dispatcher documentation indicates that it is not possible to 
> change modules on the fly, so there would be no way it could be done by 
> speakup through speechd-up at present. 

Switching modules on the fly is perfectly possible in Speech Dispatcher.  It's
one of it's core functionality right now (until TTS API is ready). What you are
speaking about is the documentation about Speechd-Up, section (Known) Problems
which says it's currently not possible in the SpeakUp -- Speech Dispatcher
combination.

With regards,
Hynek

Re: speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Sorry for my confusion, Hynek... Thanks for correcting my statements. I 
will try to read more carefully.

Chuck


On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 12:01:44PM +0200, Hynek Hanke,,, wrote:
> > The speech-dispatcher documentation indicates that it is not possible to 
> > change modules on the fly, so there would be no way it could be done by 
> > speakup through speechd-up at present. 
> 
> Switching modules on the fly is perfectly possible in Speech Dispatcher.  It's
> one of it's core functionality right now (until TTS API is ready). What you are
> speaking about is the documentation about Speechd-Up, section (Known) Problems
> which says it's currently not possible in the SpeakUp -- Speech Dispatcher
> combination.
> 
> With regards,
> Hynek
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
The Moon is New
But you can still get downloads from http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh

Re: speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

[Hynek Hanke,,,]

> I have a notebook with software speech using the programs in the 
> subject-line.
> In speech-dispatcher, I have two modules configured: flite and a generic 
> module used for afrikaans speech.  I want to be able to switch languages 
> on the fly. 

I don't think the interface provided by SpeakUp to Speechd-up supports
switching languages on the fly. When this is solved, it's easy to configure
Speech Dispatcher to switch modules according to languages (the option
LanguageDefaultModule in {prefix}/etc/speechd.conf).

Do you have any idea, Kirk?

I don't know which language charset do you use for Afrikaans. If that's
iso-8859-1 then you won't have problems with encoding, but there *will* be
problems otherwise.

With regards,
Hynek

Re: speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

[Kirk Reiser]

Hello all:  I have language switching in speakup for hardward synths
but not for speech dispatcher.  If you can point out the appropriate
portion of the manual Hynek I'll be happy to write in the some code
for doing it.  I'd also like to know about dictionaries.  I thought I
remembered reading at some point in the documentation for speech
dispatcher the capability of developing dictionaries to modify
pronunciation but when I was looking for it specifically I could not
find any reference to it.  I guess I must have been using cheap drugs
again.

  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: speakup, speechd-up, speech-dispatcher and languages

[Hynek Hanke,,,]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 06:53:48AM -0400, Kirk Reiser wrote:
> Hello all:  I have language switching in speakup for hardward synths
> but not for speech dispatcher.  If you can point out the appropriate
> portion of the manual Hynek I'll be happy to write in the some code
> for doing it. 

I'm a little confused here. Do you mean writing code into SpeakUp or
SpeechD-Up? Writing code to SpeechD-Up should be rather trivial, so I can
easily do it once I know the specs for /dev/softsynth, or you can do it right
away so that you are able to test it -- that doesn't matter.

The appropriate section in the manual to SSIP (which defines the
API to Speech Dispatcher) is here:
	http://www.freebsoft.org/doc/speechd/ssip_17.html#SEC22

How to do it particularly with the C API is here:
	http://www.freebsoft.org/doc/speechd/speech-dispatcher_33.html#SEC37

You are interested in
	SET * LANGUAGE
and
	spd_set_language()

The codes that are to be passed are defined in RFC 1766. Of course, if this is
not possible, we can translate in SpeechD-Up. Or we can let the user define
them on SpeechD-Up startup and cycle through them through some SpeakUp
command...

> I'd also like to know about dictionaries.  I thought I remembered reading at
> some point in the documentation for speech dispatcher the capability of
> developing dictionaries to modify pronunciation but when I was looking for it
> specifically I could not find any reference to it.  

That is well possible but we removed this thing later. It's not right to do so,
because Speech Dispatcher doesn't understand the text of the messages (not even
tries to) and additionally, such dictionaries (when used for punctuation) very
much confuse the target synthesizer.

The right place for such dictionaries is inside the TTS, after syntactic
analysis of the incomming text takes places, so long time after Speakup or
Speech Dispatcher. However, the application or the user can still specify some
translations and alternative pronounciation by using SSML. This is not documented
in Speech Dispatcher or SSIP docs. Please read SSML specs.

Currently only Festival supports these more advanced features, because it's
pretty much the only extensible Free Software TTS around right now. In theory,
it's possible to emulate such capabilites in the output modules of Speech
Dispatcher when the synthesizer is too stupid to do them itself, but in
practice, nobody has done it so far. I'm not convinced it's worth the trouble,
and the emulation (like the one in Speakup) will never overcome the problem
that it breaks syntactic analysis in the TTS.

As for Speakup, it already does the emulation, am I not right? The trouble
rather is that it's not possible to switch it off for the more advanced
synthesizers like Festival.

With regards,
Hynek Hanke
www.freebsoft.org