software speech for speakup

[Kirk Wood]

Software speech can have a lot of other benefits aside from a laptop. I
know of at least two people who might be interested in working as a
network administrator. The problem is that sometimes you have to work from
a console and will need speech. Plugging in a synth when needed isn't
feasible, nor is leaving one connected all the time.

Software speech is quite feasible. It isn't a perfect solution and few
have played it as such. It will one day be a good work around. This is why
macroslop has chosen to include rudimentary speech in winblows 2000. They
don't want to compete with the established market of screen readers
(yet). But they do want to give basic control to anyone. It is far from
perfect. But it is there.

Another thing that this offers is a chance to benefit from increasing the
market for speech synthasis. Some people are using some built in tool to
have a document read to them. Kind of the you hear a mistake better then
your eyes see it thing. Software speech is the only way this is cost
effective. But it could expand the market and help drive down the cost of
a hardware synth in time. If nothing else, consider that within a few
years computers with the power for software speech will cost less and be
as small as the hardware synths of today. So who knows, perhaps the future
will be a "hardware" synth running linux. If that doesn't give pause, I
don't know what will.

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Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk at 1tree.net

Nothing is hard if you know the answer or are used to doing it.