Hi Paul, (and Greg Casamento -- see the important stuff relating to the
SpeechServer below),
Many thanks for the feedback/comments on your Ubuntu experience. I am currently
running Debian 6.0.0 on a 2GHz AMD64, as I noted earlier, which made installing
GNUstep very easy.
One can resize the Monet "Synthesis Window" with the command buttons at the top
right, or (when not maximized) by grabbing one of the corners and dragging. If
the window is maximised, you can also grab the title bar and drag and this has
much the same effect as hitting the maximize button to toggle to the
non-maximized state.
However, I can see that on a 15 inch screen none of these options may be
accessible unless the window happens to display at near minimum size, in which
case you can hardly make it much smaller!
In "Synthesizer" there is no resize possibility. When I designed the interface,
I found it hard to fit everything in and still have things legible and
operational. It just barely fits on a 15 inch screen, I admit. The other tool
windows are smaller in both "Monet" and "Synthesizer" Apps.
"Monet" is not really intended as a lap-top text-to-speech facility. It is
intended as a serious research tool for use in developing databases for new
languages. The basic text-to-speech facility if the so-called SpeechServer that
runs as a daemon and is called by other Apps that need text-to-speech service
("BigMouth", for example, and also a "Services Menu" text-to-speech facility
that allows any highlighted text to be spoken -- currently only in English).
The SpeechServer is up and running on the Mac OS X, but has yet to be ported to
the GNUstep trunk.
There is an example-App that uses the SpeechServer on the Mac version called
GnuTTSClient.
I think Greg Casamento may be in the process of porting the SpeechServer. If
all you want to do is hear various synthesized utterances, or get speech output
from your own App, you only need the SpeechServer. Ideally, the control for the
SpeechServer should also be ported both onto the Mac and onto GNUstep,
otherwise you will not be able to play with the voice quality parameters very
easily. I have put images of the control panel for the ServerTestPlus App
(historical name, ServerTest did not show the scrolled hidden methods) on my
university web site. As there is a scroll panel within the window, there are
two versions so everything is visible:
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/papers/server-test-plus-window-1.jpg
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/papers/server-test-plus-window-2.jpg
These give an exact statement of the speech controls that are available and
which are also accessible in the fully ported SpeechServer. The documentation
for the original NeXT version is at:
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/papers/Developer_TextToSpeech_Manual.pdf
which gives detailed instructions on using the SpeechServer within the original
NeXTStep development environment which, as you now, is the precursor to both
GNUstep and Mac OS X xcode/InterfaceBuilder, so it should be very helpful in
any work porting to, and using the Speech server on, those two newer systems.
I would be very grateful for any help you can offer, if only criticism! :-) But
one thing you could do is to port the "BigMouth" App, the code for which you
will find in the NeXTStep trunk. Also there is the code for the pronouncing
dictionary App "PrEditor". You could have a shot at that too, though you
wouldn't be able to check either out thoroughly until you could connect to a
working SpeechServer. You can use your system as a sandbox to avoid making
mistakes which might clutter the repository and send me anything you think I
could try. You could also have a shot at the SpeechServer daemon itself. It
would be a great learning experience whatever the outcome.
If you have access to a Mac, you could do some things on that with a working
SpeechServer, and these would readily port to GNUstep. It is the gap between
NeXTStep and the two newer systems that is the big step.
Just some ideas.
Warm regards.
david
David Hill
[email protected]
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnuspeech
--------
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look
respectable. (J.K. Galbraith)
--------
On Mar 11, 2011, at 1:24 PM, Paul Tyson wrote:
> My experience building and running gnuspeech on an Ubuntu system are in
> line with Marcelo's.
>
> However, on my 15-in laptop screen the Monet synthesizer window was
> sized and positioned inconveniently, and I could not resize it to see
> the command buttons. I opened the project in gorm and was able to
> resize it there, save, and then run the app to synthesize text input. A
> first improvement might be to equip the synthesizer window with resize
> controls.
>
> Since I don't know how to exercise other features of the app I can't say
> more, but in poking around I did experience unexpected window
> disappearances.
>
> I am glad to see discussion on this topic. I am new to gnuspeech and
> gnustep but would like to contribute if I can.
>
> Regards,
> --Paul
>
> On Fri, 2011-03-11 at 10:29 -0800, David Hill wrote:
>> Sorry people,
>>
>>
>> I didn't copy my reply to Greg to the list. Here's the list copy
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: David Hill <[email protected]>
>>>
>>> Date: March 11, 2011 10:28:14 AM PST
>>>
>>> To: Gregory Casamento <[email protected]>
>>>
>>> Subject: Re: [gnuspeech-contact] GNUstep & gnuspeech
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Greg,
>>>
>>> We abandoned CVS a while back -- it is all in SVN now. The CVS
>>> repository really ought to be removed from the gnuspeech savannah
>>> site but it did not seem to be an option at the time.
>>>
>>> Warm regards.
>>>
>>> david
>>>
>>> On Mar 11, 2011, at 10:09 AM, Gregory Casamento wrote:
>>>
>>>> As embarassing as this is... is there a branch you guys created
>>>> for
>>>> building the GNUstep version because what's in CVS right now does
>>>> not
>>>> build for me.
>>>>
>>>> Any special instructions?
>>>>
>>>> GC
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 8:00 PM, David Hill <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Hi Marcelo,
>>>>>
>>>>> This is by way of a few comments on my initial experiences with
>>>>> "gnuspeech" under GNUstep.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have done some more testing on the GNUstep version of
>>>>> gnuspeech "Synthesizer". There are more problems than I first
>>>>> thought, including the fact I can even crash the App by simply
>>>>> choosing a radio button at times (I found more than one
>>>>> example). I need to look at this carefully and sort out the
>>>>> problems. However, much of what was implemented for OS X works
>>>>> on the GNUstep version, the most notable omission being the
>>>>> spectrograph display for speech (but it display correctly for
>>>>> the test waveform input). The spectral cross-section in the
>>>>> analysis window seems to work as it is supposed to. Of course
>>>>> there are stubs for some of the secondary graphs which I have to
>>>>> flesh out in both versions. The "About" panel shows up without
>>>>> its content, but the content is available in its .pdf file.
>>>>> Perhaps GNUstep doesn't handle .pdf. I have to get more
>>>>> thoroughly into testing and start looking at it in the
>>>>> development environment.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there a good guide to working with the GNUstep IDE?
>>>>> (especially porting from Max OS X)
>>>>>
>>>>> When I "openapp Monet" command it prints out a message near the
>>>>> start:
>>>>>
>>>>> Monet [2431 ] Error: No audio output device is available.
>>>>> Monet [2431] API OSS
>>>>>
>>>>> Do I need to install OSS, even though I did install
>>>>> portaudio19-dev. I can synthesize to a file, and then listen to
>>>>> it using the Media player but cannot produce the output
>>>>> directly. Perhaps this is why. On subsequent invocations, the
>>>>> message did not appear.
>>>>>
>>>>> Later, just after ", [2431]
>>>>> filename:
>>>>> /home/david/Library/Application/Support/GnuSpeech/pronunciations, db:
>>>>> 0x44e9df0, has been loaded: 1" it outputs:
>>>>>
>>>>> Monet [2431] File NSData.m: 282. In readContentsOfFile read of
>>>>> file (/home/david) contents failed -t
>>>>> Monet [2431] Error: Failed to load file (nil) (nil)
>>>>>
>>>>> but it didn't seem to stop anything working.
>>>>>
>>>>> When synthesizing the message:
>>>>>
>>>>> Monet [3537] NSNumberFormatter-getObjectValue:forString ... not
>>>>> fully implemented
>>>>>
>>>>> appeared -- presumably explaining the failure to output numbers
>>>>> on the display properly (many appear as "NaN")
>>>>>
>>>>> Some font "not found" messages are output .
>>>>>
>>>>> PreMo seems to work just fine using openapp, but a curious fact:
>>>>> I can fire up "Synthesizer" by double-clicking the App icon but
>>>>> I cannot do that with "Monet" or "PreMo".
>>>>>
>>>>> I am impressed by how much of the project is ported and working.
>>>>> I am keen to get things to a state, as soon as possible, where I
>>>>> feel comfortable with a first official release, even if it is
>>>>> alpha or beta. Help anyone? Comments anyone?
>>>>>
>>>>> Warm regards and thanks for any feedback.
>>>>>
>>>>> david
>>>>>
>>>>> -------
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> gnuspeech-contact mailing list
>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnuspeech-contact
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Gregory Casamento - GNUstep Lead/Principal Consultant, OLC, Inc.
>>>> yahoo/skype: greg_casamento, aol: gjcasa
>>>> (240)274-9630 (Cell)
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnuspeech-contact mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnuspeech-contact
>
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