Speakup website

[T. Joseph CARTER]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2006 at 08:24:51AM -0500, Kirk Reiser wrote:
> It is an extremely busy site so the average load is heavy.  There are
> mirrors that are faster though, one of them being fl.linux-speakup.org.

I figured it was something like that.  I just know of a couple of hosting
providers who can take a moderate slashdotting and are willing to take
free software projects free of charge now and then.


> Well, I don't know what it is you are trying to do that is different
> from what else has come along but you can find all the documentation
> on synthesizers I've been able to accumulate at
> ftp://linux-speakup.org/pub/linux/goodies/synths-documentation/.  If
> anyone comes accross synth docs I don't have there I'd appreciate them
> sending it to me so I can make it available.

Jackpot, thanks!  The number one thing I am doing differently than the
other things I have seen is that I am using index responses extensively
and neither the speakup interface nor the emacspeak speech server seem to
support them.

I'm not just reading what's on the screen and shutting up on cue like
speakup and other screen readers are--I need to know what's just been
said.  (That's a little frustrating since what I've implemented so far is
a Macintalk driver so I need not use flite, and Macintalk wants to tell
you what it's just about to read.  Quite annoying actually.)

I'm currently in the market for an external speech synth so I can begin
working on this stuff on my Linux machines without having to get anywhere
near flite.  I should just break down and pay for a runtime license for
dectalk or ttsynth or something I suppose, but that seems somehow less
useful unless the people who make those things want to include a runtime
for each of the platforms I am currently working to support (Linux on
i386, AMD64, and ARM-based PDAs, Apple Darwin PowerPC/i386, Windows XP.)

With my non-talking speech stub, my code literally runs on all of the
above right now.  (That'll be more impressive when it's closer to finished
I am sure), and I have been testing it on all of them.  Currently only
Darwin is supported for speech (as a component of MacOS X no less),
because my only speech support at present is Macintalk.  I don't intend to
release it until I have more speech support than that because I don't want
this thing to become an extremely obscure console-based MacOS X thingy,
because it's not except that Macintalk is the software speech engine I
happen to have handy that I am willing to listen to long enough to write
code for it.  *grin*

-- 
"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, therefore, is not an act,
but a habit."
	-- Aristotle