eSpeak support in Orca -- what is the best way?
Hi all, I've been working with Gilles Casse of Oralux on a spec for better multilingual speech support in Ubuntu, and as it happens, the crux comes down to support for eSpeak in Orca. Let me explain ... The aim of the MultilingualSpeechSynthesis spec is to extend our current provision to synthesised speech in multiple languages right on the CD. That is not possible with Festival because the voices are too big, but should be possible with eSpeak. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/MultilingualSpeechSynthesis We also plan to improve the speakup support on default systems and Live CDs using eSpeak, which fits in well with the added language support. However, the main focus of the Live CD is still going to be the Gnome GUI. So we have to support both interfaces, and we want to do it with the same speech synth to avoid duplication. But we won't move the Live CD from Festival to eSpeak until we are confident that there is good support for eSpeak with Orca. (btw, many people will still prefer Festival or other synths and we should have good support for those and make sure installing and setting up is easy) I know I'm probably stirring up a old debate when I ask what the best way to do that is. I guess there are two options: * Write a gnome-speech driver for eSpeak -- How much work is involved with this? Gilles says he is willing to start on this. * Speech Dispacher support for Orca -- I know there have been issues raised about this before. Some missing features are mentioned here: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/SpeechDispatcher -- Using the Orca - gnome-speech - SpeechDispatcher - eSpeak chain is not really an option for a stable release I think. I'm not really technically qualified to have a firm opinion about which route is best or easier to implement. I simply note that a solution is a prerequisite for the multilingual Live CD and the enhanced speakup support. In principle I'm a fan of the speech dispatcher approach because I feel it open up more options for the future such as Orca running on KDE, but if the missing features there mean holding up a spec like multilingual support for a cycle or more then I'd like to consider alternatives. I've made a spec describing what we need and briefly mention the two options. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/OrcaEspeak Another question is whether eSpeak itself is feature complete enough (does not support asynchronous calls ATM AFAIK), but this is mediated by the ability to install Festival or something else post-install. I do wonder how the user community would react to a sudden switch of default synth though. Thoughts? Discuss :) Henrik ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
Re: eSpeak support in Orca -- what is the best way?
Hi, For a live cd, I think you would not find a smaller synth that is clear enough to be understood the first time around than Espeak. Espeak has indexing, pitch/volume/rate selection and some support for punctuation speaking. One advantage of using speech-dispatcher, is that one can run speakup and orca on the same machine without the two fighting about access to the sound card. Now that espeak has an API, one should be able to make a better speech-dispatcher module for it. I think some work has been done on that. Is Espeak included in Ubuntu? Regards, Willem On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote: Hi all, I've been working with Gilles Casse of Oralux on a spec for better multilingual speech support in Ubuntu, and as it happens, the crux comes down to support for eSpeak in Orca. Let me explain ... The aim of the MultilingualSpeechSynthesis spec is to extend our current provision to synthesised speech in multiple languages right on the CD. That is not possible with Festival because the voices are too big, but should be possible with eSpeak. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/MultilingualSpeechSynthesis We also plan to improve the speakup support on default systems and Live CDs using eSpeak, which fits in well with the added language support. However, the main focus of the Live CD is still going to be the Gnome GUI. So we have to support both interfaces, and we want to do it with the same speech synth to avoid duplication. But we won't move the Live CD from Festival to eSpeak until we are confident that there is good support for eSpeak with Orca. (btw, many people will still prefer Festival or other synths and we should have good support for those and make sure installing and setting up is easy) I know I'm probably stirring up a old debate when I ask what the best way to do that is. I guess there are two options: * Write a gnome-speech driver for eSpeak -- How much work is involved with this? Gilles says he is willing to start on this. * Speech Dispacher support for Orca -- I know there have been issues raised about this before. Some missing features are mentioned here: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/SpeechDispatcher -- Using the Orca - gnome-speech - SpeechDispatcher - eSpeak chain is not really an option for a stable release I think. I'm not really technically qualified to have a firm opinion about which route is best or easier to implement. I simply note that a solution is a prerequisite for the multilingual Live CD and the enhanced speakup support. In principle I'm a fan of the speech dispatcher approach because I feel it open up more options for the future such as Orca running on KDE, but if the missing features there mean holding up a spec like multilingual support for a cycle or more then I'd like to consider alternatives. I've made a spec describing what we need and briefly mention the two options. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/OrcaEspeak Another question is whether eSpeak itself is feature complete enough (does not support asynchronous calls ATM AFAIK), but this is mediated by the ability to install Festival or something else post-install. I do wonder how the user community would react to a sudden switch of default synth though. Thoughts? Discuss :) Henrik ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list -- This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright, terms and conditions and e-mail legal notice. Views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the CSIR. CSIR E-mail Legal Notice http://mail.csir.co.za/CSIR_eMail_Legal_Notice.html CSIR Copyright, Terms and Conditions http://mail.csir.co.za/CSIR_Copyright.html For electronic copies of the CSIR Copyright, Terms and Conditions and the CSIR Legal Notice send a blank message with REQUEST LEGAL in the subject line to [EMAIL PROTECTED] This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks Transtec Computers for their support. ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
Re: eSpeak support in Orca -- what is the best way?
Hi Henrik: Perhaps the most expedient solution would be to write a basic driver layer for eSpeak, initially with gnome-speech wrapper interfaces, with the intention of moving it to Speech Dispatcher later on. The basic APIs are I hope similar enough that only a modest amount of code would have to be discarded in the migration. Maybe I am being naive about the reusability of such code, but I would hope that if the author of a gnome-speech eSpeak driver read and reviewed the Speech Dispatcher API first, you could end up with most of the code being reused when moving to SD, while not 'blocking' on the SD RFEs from the orca team. I, too, would like to see orca and the rest of Gnome move to Speech Dispatcher, once the orca team's concerns are met. Regards, Bill Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote: Hi all, I've been working with Gilles Casse of Oralux on a spec for better multilingual speech support in Ubuntu, and as it happens, the crux comes down to support for eSpeak in Orca. Let me explain ... The aim of the MultilingualSpeechSynthesis spec is to extend our current provision to synthesised speech in multiple languages right on the CD. That is not possible with Festival because the voices are too big, but should be possible with eSpeak. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/MultilingualSpeechSynthesis We also plan to improve the speakup support on default systems and Live CDs using eSpeak, which fits in well with the added language support. However, the main focus of the Live CD is still going to be the Gnome GUI. So we have to support both interfaces, and we want to do it with the same speech synth to avoid duplication. But we won't move the Live CD from Festival to eSpeak until we are confident that there is good support for eSpeak with Orca. (btw, many people will still prefer Festival or other synths and we should have good support for those and make sure installing and setting up is easy) I know I'm probably stirring up a old debate when I ask what the best way to do that is. I guess there are two options: * Write a gnome-speech driver for eSpeak -- How much work is involved with this? Gilles says he is willing to start on this. * Speech Dispacher support for Orca -- I know there have been issues raised about this before. Some missing features are mentioned here: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/SpeechDispatcher -- Using the Orca - gnome-speech - SpeechDispatcher - eSpeak chain is not really an option for a stable release I think. I'm not really technically qualified to have a firm opinion about which route is best or easier to implement. I simply note that a solution is a prerequisite for the multilingual Live CD and the enhanced speakup support. In principle I'm a fan of the speech dispatcher approach because I feel it open up more options for the future such as Orca running on KDE, but if the missing features there mean holding up a spec like multilingual support for a cycle or more then I'd like to consider alternatives. I've made a spec describing what we need and briefly mention the two options. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/OrcaEspeak Another question is whether eSpeak itself is feature complete enough (does not support asynchronous calls ATM AFAIK), but this is mediated by the ability to install Festival or something else post-install. I do wonder how the user community would react to a sudden switch of default synth though. Thoughts? Discuss :) Henrik ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
Re: eSpeak support in Orca -- what is the best way?
Hi All: We recently looked at making a gnome-speech driver for eSpeak, but the main problem is that the eSpeak libraries have no facilities for sending samples to the audio device. Instead, it relies upon the application to manage the audio. Having developed a speech synthesis engine in the past, I understand this decision because it helps keep life simple. In my opinion, however, we really need the eSpeak libraries to support audio directly. If someone were able to get this going, we probably could get faster response time and see eSpeak viable on more systems (e.g., gnome-speech, SpeechDispatcher, emacspeak, etc.). Will On Fri, 2006-12-01 at 13:06 +0100, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote: Hi all, I've been working with Gilles Casse of Oralux on a spec for better multilingual speech support in Ubuntu, and as it happens, the crux comes down to support for eSpeak in Orca. Let me explain ... The aim of the MultilingualSpeechSynthesis spec is to extend our current provision to synthesised speech in multiple languages right on the CD. That is not possible with Festival because the voices are too big, but should be possible with eSpeak. See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/MultilingualSpeechSynthesis We also plan to improve the speakup support on default systems and Live CDs using eSpeak, which fits in well with the added language support. However, the main focus of the Live CD is still going to be the Gnome GUI. So we have to support both interfaces, and we want to do it with the same speech synth to avoid duplication. But we won't move the Live CD from Festival to eSpeak until we are confident that there is good support for eSpeak with Orca. (btw, many people will still prefer Festival or other synths and we should have good support for those and make sure installing and setting up is easy) I know I'm probably stirring up a old debate when I ask what the best way to do that is. I guess there are two options: * Write a gnome-speech driver for eSpeak -- How much work is involved with this? Gilles says he is willing to start on this. * Speech Dispacher support for Orca -- I know there have been issues raised about this before. Some missing features are mentioned here: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/SpeechDispatcher -- Using the Orca - gnome-speech - SpeechDispatcher - eSpeak chain is not really an option for a stable release I think. I'm not really technically qualified to have a firm opinion about which route is best or easier to implement. I simply note that a solution is a prerequisite for the multilingual Live CD and the enhanced speakup support. In principle I'm a fan of the speech dispatcher approach because I feel it open up more options for the future such as Orca running on KDE, but if the missing features there mean holding up a spec like multilingual support for a cycle or more then I'd like to consider alternatives. I've made a spec describing what we need and briefly mention the two options. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs/OrcaEspeak Another question is whether eSpeak itself is feature complete enough (does not support asynchronous calls ATM AFAIK), but this is mediated by the ability to install Festival or something else post-install. I do wonder how the user community would react to a sudden switch of default synth though. Thoughts? Discuss :) Henrik ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
Re: eSpeak support in Orca -- what is the best way?
Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote: * Speech Dispacher support for Orca -- I know there have been issues raised about this before. Some missing features are mentioned here: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/SpeechDispatcher Hello, the major issue now is the missing callback support. This results in missing cursor/speech synchronization. As far as I know, the end user will notice that in OpenOffice when reading the whole document -- when he interrupts the speech, the cursor will not be positioned to the place where the speech was interrupted. Maybe there are some other situation, may someone comment on that? Adding this support into the Speech Dispatcher Orca backend should not be technically difficult (my rough estimation is 40 manhours, being tempted to say much less). Well, once we get the functionality to the Orca backend, we will also need to support it in the Speech-Dispatcher eSpeak driver. The author of eSpeak added an API for that recently. Maybe Hynek or Jonathan will tell us more about the progress here. I do wonder how the user community would react to a sudden switch of default synth though. Thoughts? Please also note, that Dpeech Dispatcher allows you to switch synthesizers automatically based on the current language, so you should be able to use e.g. Festival for English and eSpeak for other languages. This, however, must be supported by the client (i.e. Orca) by providing relevant language information. Hope this information helps. Tomas. ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
Re: eSpeak support in Orca -- what is the best way?
Will Walker wrote: We recently looked at making a gnome-speech driver for eSpeak, but the main problem is that the eSpeak libraries have no facilities for sending samples to the audio device. Instead, it relies upon the application to manage the audio. Having developed a speech synthesis engine in the past, I understand this decision because it helps keep life simple. In my opinion, however, we really need the eSpeak libraries to support audio directly. If someone were able to get this going, we probably could get faster response time and see eSpeak viable on more systems (e.g., gnome-speech, SpeechDispatcher, emacspeak, etc.). I agree. The eSpeak Speech API should be handling this under the covers. So that it's not lost, and also to act as a starting point for anybody else who is interested in working on this, I've opened: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=381322 which is an enhancement request for an eSpeak driver for GNOME Speech. It contains a couple of attachments: * Patch to add in the basic GNOME Speech infrastructure for the eSpeak driver. * Sample program from the eSpeak author to show how to turn text to a speech .wav file. ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
what happened to gnopernicus?
I have been away from linux/gnome for almost a year now, I think the last version of gnome I used was 2.6. When I installed fedora core 6, I discovered that gnopernicus, gnome-speech and gok are all missing. What happened to these tools? Cheers, Don Raikes, Accessibility Specialist 4848 W. Rosebay S. Tucson, AZ 85742 Home office: (520) 579-9481 AIM: dnraikes ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
Re: what happened to gnopernicus?
Hi, Don: Don Raikes writes: When I installed fedora core 6, I discovered that gnopernicus, gnome-speech and gok are all missing. What happened to these tools? They're all there, except that Gnopernicus is now replaced by Orca. I can't know, of course, what selections you made during your FC6 installation process that kept them from being installed, but you can easily install them using yum. Red Hat is keeping them quite current, in fact. My advice is to install orca from the Fedora development tree in order to track the latest developments. The downside of doing this is that you'll need to take care to retrieve updates by hand. Here's how to do that: yum --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo=development install orca For gok and gnome-speech, just do: yum install gok gnome-speech Here are the rpm listings from my FC6 installs: Name: orca Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 2.17.2Vendor: Red Hat, Inc. Release : 1.fc7 Build Date: Tue 07 Nov 2006 03:14:49 PM EST Install Date: Wed 08 Nov 2006 10:28:54 PM EST Build Host: hs20-bc2-4.build.redhat.com Group : User Interface/Desktops Source RPM: orca-2.17.2-1.fc7.src.rpm Size: 4178596 License: LGPL Signature : (none) Packager: Red Hat, Inc. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla URL : http://www.gnome.org/projects/orca/ Summary : Flexible, extensible, and powerful assistive technology Description : Orca is a flexible, extensible, and powerful assistive technology for people with visual impairments. Using various combinations of speech synthesis, braille, and magnification, Orca helps provide access to applications and toolkits that support the AT-SPI (e.g., the GNOME desktop). Name: gnome-speech Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 0.4.6 Vendor: Red Hat, Inc. Release : 1.fc7 Build Date: Sun 05 Nov 2006 11:44:31 PM EST Install Date: Wed 15 Nov 2006 09:11:38 PM EST Build Host: hs20-bc2-3.build.redhat.com Group : Desktop/Accessibility Source RPM: gnome-speech-0.4.6-1.fc7.src.rpm Size: 73554License: LGPL Signature : (none) Packager: Red Hat, Inc. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla URL : http://www.gnome.org/ Summary : GNOME Text to Speech Description : GNOME Speech Name: gok Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 1.2.0 Vendor: Red Hat, Inc. Release : 1.fc6 Build Date: Fri 08 Sep 2006 01:03:34 PM EDT Install Date: Fri 27 Oct 2006 07:56:33 PM EDT Build Host: hs20-bc1-7.build.redhat.com Group : Desktop/Accessibility Source RPM: gok-1.2.0-1.fc6.src.rpm Size: 9669932 License: GPL Signature : DSA/SHA1, Tue 03 Oct 2006 09:51:32 PM EDT, Key ID b44269d04f2a6fd2Packager: Red Hat, Inc. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla URL : http://www.gok.ca/ Summary : GNOME Onscreen Keyboard Description : The gok project aims to enable users to control their computer without having to rely on a standard keyboard or mouse, leveraging GNOME's built-in accessibility framework. Cheers, Don Raikes, Accessibility Specialist 4848 W. Rosebay S. Tucson, AZ 85742 Home office: (520) 579-9481 AIM: dnraikes ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list -- Janina SajkaPhone: +1.202.595. Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC http://CapitalAccessibility.Com Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada--Go to http://ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more. Chair, Accessibility Workgroup Free Standards Group (FSG) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://a11y.org ___ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
