Speakup and ViaVoice.

[Terry D. Cudney]

Hi Brian and everyone interested in ViaVoice w/ Speakup,

	Excellent points you make, Brian, helping everyone to put this into perspective.

	I think many of us dreamof having a streamlined, portable system w/ speech, therefore the interest in ViaVoice.  However,  most of us don't have a laptop w/ a >166MHz CcPU which makes Viavoice less desirable. As for using ViaVoice on a desktop, well, the only people interested there, I think< would be those without a hardware synth who are trying to cut costs in getting a speakup enabled system going.

	We don't want to bloat the kernel needlessly.

	On a portable system, for the sake of lightweightedness, we might be wiling to forgo the bootup messages. But the processor requirements might be too high for most of current portables.

	Interesting possibilities, maybe not practical yet....?

Brian Borowski wrote:

-=> There's been a thread about speakup and ViaVoice and writing the code to
-=> make this work.  I wanted to point out a few things about this idea, that
-=> are going to have to be worked out.
-=>
-=> *  ViaVoice is a software synthesizer and the kernel has to be running,
-=> and most of the other parts of linux have to be operational before
-=> anything can be done with a software synthesizer, unless it gets totally
-=> built into the kernel; that could make a kernel huge, and would also
-=> require that sound card stuff (there are very many sound cards out there),
-=> be loaded into the kernel as well.
-=>
-=> *  You would miss the real-time boot-up stuff from the kernel, a very
-=> important feature, in my opinion, especially when trying to figure out
-=> what is going on when something is not working as it should be, or when
-=> you're trying to build a kernel and something isn't quite working write.
-=> You could make use of the kernel message buffer to have the software
-=> synthesizer speak the startup messages after the fact, but if there was a
-=> failure during bootup; you would never get the opportunity to hear
-=> anything at all, because you'd never get the speech started up.
-=>
-=> *  Then, finally, there's another thing, the kernel is open source,
-=> speakup is open source, the information is available for the software
-=> synthesizer API, and perhaps, with some imagination, someone can figure
-=> out a solution for the above two points.  If someone really wants this
-=> badly enough, why can't they put some effort into coding for this project.
-=>
-=> There's more than enough work with the normal speakup development to keep
-=> a few Kirks busy, without even worrying about ViaVoice, so I suspect, that
-=> this is one of those projects that someone else will have to do.  If
-=> there's no one else to do it; it probably won't get done for a very long
-=> time.
-=>
-=> Brian Borowski
-=>
-=>
-=>
-=> _______________________________________________
-=> Speakup mailing list
-=> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
-=> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
-=>

		--terry

Name:	Terry D. Cudney
Phone:	(905)735-6127
E-mail:	terry at wasagacottage.com
WWW:	www.wasagacottage.com



Q:	How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
	light bulb?
A:	Seven.  Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
	the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
	Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim
	that he's a doctor, not an electrician).  Scotty, after checking
	around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
	that he "canna" see in the dark.  Kirk will make an emergency stop at
	the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
	from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
	Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
	beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply
	killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
	As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
	Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
	warp out of orbit.  Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
	and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
	just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
	given all lightbulbs they can carry.  The new bulb is then inserted
	and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.