An HPR episode on this topic would be amazing. If you're too busy, i'd be happy to read your email into a recorder and release the show in your name.
On 16 April 2019 1:10:29 PM NZST, Mike Ray <[email protected]> wrote: > >I got an error when I tried to post a comment about the latest podcast >about TTS. > >I don't have the error code now as I pasted it into an email to admin >and the email bounced. > >I suspect it was because my comment was too long, here it is: > > >Condescending and sarcastic. > >Oh isn't text-to-speech such a laugh? > >I get really, really annoyed when people criticise eSpeak. > >Anybody who complains about it sounding robotic obviously was not >around >thirty years ago. > >eSpeak's author, Jonathan Duddington, in my humble opinion, deserves a >Nobel prize. > >He has probably done more for blind and visually impaired computer >users, like me, all over the world, than any other individual or >organisation. > >In fact it is hard to name any single person who has had such an impact >on any group of users, apart perhaps from Linus Torvalds and Richard >Stallman. > >1. It is Open Source. >2. It is tiny, the memory footprint is small. >3. It is snappy and can speak really fast, which is what we (blind >people) use when we get used to it, speeds that would make your hair >curl. >4. It probably has more language support than any other free and Open >Source synthesiser. >5. It can run in a mode where it can return rendered speech, in the >form >of PCM, to a calling program, so it can be used in other programs. I >don't think any other synth can do this. >6. It can even return phonemes, a mode which I have used more than once >to provide a kind of 'fuzzy search' in a database. > >I regularly write and maintain library code, and application code, in >C, >C++ and/or Python, as well as Perl, and many of these code libraries >have in excess of 100k lines. > >Including, incidentally, a library which used a combination of eSpeak >and OMX to render TTS directly on the GPU of a Raspberry Pi when 'they' >broke the ALSA driver on the Pi, which made the speech stutter and >crash >the kernel, and refused to fix it for about four years. > >If I spent all my time bitching about how robotic eSpeak is I would >never get any work done. > >How much time do you spend when you should be writing code, worrying >about your wallpaper or the colour of your screen's background? > >Or do you just not notice it after a while? > >Well, after spending years writing code when I can't even see the Sun >when I stare directly at it, I can tell you I never notice what eSpeak >sounds like. > >I would probably be equally at home working with flite, festival, or >svox pico (which you missed). > >In addition, eSpeak is in use in NVDA, the free and Open Source Windows >screen reader which is currently giving the multi-hundreds of pounds >commercial offerings a real problem, and providing cash-strapped blind >users a chance. Although now the Windows Narrator is catching up, I >still prefer NVDA and eSpeak. > >MaryTTS is bloated. There was some excitement around it a few years >ago, but it has more or less faded away in the minds of the blind and >VI >community, since it is so bloated and, as far as I know, nobody has >ever >made a successful screen reader from it. > >Even if there was one, it would probably make a Raspberry Pi choke. >Whereas eSpeak runs snappily and happily on a 256k Raspberry Pi >first-gen. > >The 'holy trinity' of the Linux GUI, as far as blind and VI users are >concerned, is: > >1. Orca, the GTK screen reader, written in Python, and a work of art. >2. speech-dispatcher, written in C, a TTS 'server' program which Orca >connects to to send text and get speech from it. >3. eSpeak, although there are speech-dispatcher modules also for flite >and festival, eSpeak is the best one IMHO. > >In the console: > >1. SpeakUp, kernel modules including speakup and speakup_soft which >make >a console mode screen reader. >2. espeakup, the SpeakUp to eSpeak connector. >3. eSpeak. > >eSpeak is gold dust. > > > > >-- >Michael A. Ray >Analyst/Programmer >Witley, Surrey, South-east UK > >"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but >when >there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery > > >https://cromarty.github.io/ >http://eyesfreelinux.ninja/ >http://www.raspberryvi.org/ > > > >_______________________________________________ >Hpr mailing list >[email protected] >http://hackerpublicradio.org/mailman/listinfo/hpr_hackerpublicradio.org
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