Re: gnome-speech and proprietory software synthesizers.

[Marc Mulcahy <Marc Mulcahy Sun COM>]

Hi Luke,

The difficulties in gnome-speech are a bit complex - if you make a spec 
file that builds various gnome-speech packages, such as:

gnome-speech
gnome-speech-devel
gnome-speech-java
gnome-speech-festival

etc...

Using this sort of spec file, the source RPM will only build on a system 
where all the supported TTS engines are installed.  And since some of them 
are proprietary, the free distributions won't touch such a spec file or 
source rpm.  So if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.  I'm a 
bit stumped on this issue.

Marc


On Tue, 11 May 2004, Tom and Esther Ward wrote:

> Hi, Luke.
> That is a very good point, and one I have thought about many times myself.
> Iam fortunate that I am able to compile gnome-speech from source, and can
> make Mandrake rpm packages with the extra drivers included.
> However, Mandrake and I suspect other Linux distributions would not want the
> extra drivers included as the supported other synths are not Open source and
> don't want the legal entanglements.
> I am facing this very problem with some blind users out my way that want to
> get involved with gnopernicus and the gnome desktop, but they refuse to use
> festival because they hate the sound of the speech. Personally, I kind of
> like festival, but the users out this way want Dectalk.
> So I end up remotely compiling gnome-speech over again with the proper
> drivers.
> I guess the big issue is that blind users that come from Windows expect
> gnopernicus to have all sorts of braille drivers, speech drivers, all
> bundled together with the screen reader like Jaws, Window Eyes, etc, but
> that isn't how it is do to being under the GPL.
> I don't mind doing the compiles myself for myself, but I see gnopernicus
> will be a hard sell to most blind users that freak out when the words source
> and compile come up.
> I really don't know what the answer will be for those users who want
> everything bundled nice for a specific distribution, but I imagine those of
> us users could build our own Linux packages and put them out somewhere for
> public download.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Luke Yelavich" <themuso themuso com>
> To: <gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org>;
> <gnome-accessibility-list gnome org>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 5:51 AM
> Subject: gnome-speech and proprietory software synthesizers.
> 
> 
> > Hi all.
> > I have been thinking about gnome-speech, and compiling the software
> > synthesizer drivers for proprietory synths, such as DECtalk and Cepstral.
> > It has come to my awareness that there may be an issue to do with
> > gnome-speech being distributed as a binary package for various distros,
> > without the proprietory synth drivers built. If this doesn't make sense,
> > perhaps the scenario outlined below may help to get my point across.
> >
> > A blind/vision impaired user wants to install Linux on their machine. They
> > choose a distro to their liking and want to try out Gnopernicus and GNOME.
> > They find out that Festival is free and works with Gnopernicus. After
> > installing the relevant Festival packages from their distro, they find
> that
> > they don't like the voices.
> >
> > After doing some research, they find out that they can buy a software
> > synthesizer for Linux, which can work with Gnopernicus. So they buy it,
> and
> > install it. However, they can't get it to work with Gnopernicus.
> >
> > They do more research and find out that gnome-speech needs to be
> > re-compiled in order to work with their software synthesizer. However they
> > don't feel comfortable and/or don't want to compile from source, which
> > makes them feel like the software synth has been a waste of money.
> >
> > So with the current architecture, is it possible to package a gnome-speech
> > package for a distro as is done now, and also have add-on packages which
> > can be used to install drivers for proprietory synths?
> >
> > Let me know if you either don't understand, or want more clarrification.
> >
> > Regards
> > Luke
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
> >
> 
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