Well, actually mobilespeak doesn't give you a dynamic choice of synth -- you have to choose your language and synth when you purchase mobilespeak, and your installation is then tied to that choice. However, the number of synths and languages mobilespeak supports is impressive. But I am using talks because that is what was in the package I bought with the phone and knfb reader. Just thought I'd comment. Happy listening all! --le
----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Chaltain" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 6:27 AM Subject: RE: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense? It's true that there's a mobile version of Eloquence that isn't that big and that's been on cell phones and other mobile devices for a while. In fact, I'd suspect it's smaller than the synthesizer and voices currently on the Booksense, although I don't really know that for sure. I think what Dianne is getting at though is that having both synthesizers and sets of voices would use more memory and resources. It's true that cell phones have supported multiple synthesizers and voice options for a while, but remember that we're talking smart phones which are relatively powerful for their size. Adding synthesizers to the Booksense could also add to the price a bit since GW Micro would have to acquire the license to use Eloquence and potentially add to the internal memory of the Booksense. I guess one way around one of these problems would be to have multiple downloads for the firmware, one would be based off of the current synthesizer and the other off of Eloquence. That way people could pick and choose and have even more options. For my part, I prefer Eloquence, but I can see why some prefer other voices. Ideally, I'd like to use Eloquence for the menus and another more human sounding synthesizer for reading the text, however, for my part, this would be a pretty low priority item. For the most part, I like the Booksense just fine for how I use it. -- Christopher [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: qubit [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 3:14 PM To: Dianne B. Phelps; 'EVAN REESE'; 'GW-micro' Subject: Re: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense? That sounds plausible except that eloquence has been the synth on cell phone screen readers since 2004. It really isn't that big. I wonder if there are more legal or technical reasons that it is not being made available. One technical reason (which doesn't stop people from using it anyway) is that there are sequences of characters that cause eloquence to hang and crash the program and sometimes the system. I tried some of the ones I know about on my cell phone with talks and with jaws and indeed it is true. And they have been known for a while but not fixed. As for legalities, the competition over ownership of software makes using eloquence a potential difficulty business wise. Case in point: Nuance, who makes talks, also owns eloquence and the competing cell phone screen reader mobilespeak, began using eloquence as an optional synth. Most people used it in fact. However, Nuance made changes to eloquence that caused it to trip up mobilespeak so CodeFactory (who develop mobilespeak) eventually dropped support for eloquence. In short, the devil is in the details. I have no problem with Kate and Paul (I prefer Kate for some reason) except that they get choppy and hard to understand at higher speeds. So that's my thought, take it or leave it. Happy reading. --le ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dianne B. Phelps" <[email protected]> To: "'EVAN REESE'" <[email protected]>; "'GW-micro'" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 11:33 PM Subject: RE: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense? I think the reason we don't see something like Elliquence is that there is only so much memory to hold what is necessary to generate speech and sounds on a divice the size of the Book Sense. After my disappointment with the Victor Reader stream, I am amazed the Book Sense is as good as it is. Having said that, there are people among us who simply are not comfortable reading with the speech synthesizer. Two of my friends, people I have known for many years, simply won't tolerate anything that isn't human narrated, and that's ok. Reading needs to be something comfortable and as long as there are choices, there is certainly nothing wrong with opting for digitally recorded material rather than speech synthesis. Dianne -----Original Message----- From: EVAN REESE [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 6:22 PM To: GW-micro Subject: Re: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense? True, human readers mispronounce things, but my Window Eyes with Eloquence mispronounces a lot less than the voice on my Book Sense. I wish they would have just installed Eloquence on the Book Sense. It's very understandable at high rates of speech and it has substantially better pronunciation than what's in there now. Evan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terri Pannett" <[email protected]> To: "Dianne B. Phelps" <[email protected]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 7:48 PM Subject: Re: [GW-Booksense] new voices for the booksense? > Don't change the voices! They're great! > > They mispronounce words, but so do human readers! A human reader should > know better, but some people never learned phoenics. > > Terri Amateur Radio call sign KF6CA. If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list andyour message is related to GW Micro or the BookSense, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. To manage your subscription to gw-booksense, visit: http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list andyour message is related to GW Micro or the BookSense, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. To manage your subscription to gw-booksense, visit: http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv
