Some Questions about Ubuntu and Orca

[Chris Norman]

On Sun, 2008-02-24 at 17:15 -0600, Kelly Sapergia wrote:
> Hi,
>     My laptop is now set up to boot from CDs, so I can now try the 
> live CD version of Ubuntu. I have a couple questions about the system:
> 
> 1. Can you use any other soft synths with Orca? I know it comes with 
> eSpeak, but I'm not too impressed with the voice. If not, that's OK, 
> I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Yes you can, festival, flite, IBMTTS, ... To be fair though, although
epseak doesn't sound particulally human, it is a lot clearer than most
comercial voices, such as hal (Dolphin), and you'll find if you listen
to it for a long period of time, it doesn't tend to get menotanous. I've
been using ESpeak for over 24 hours solid now today (and yesterday), and
it hasnI still find it easy to listen to, whereas hal would have begun
to grate on me by now.
> 
> 2. As far as applications go, are there any good audio editors or 
> players, and games (such as text adventure interpreters) that can be 
> used with Ubuntu and Orca?

Brilliant ones.. They just don't work with orca. By games interpreters,
I guess you mean the old z5 interpreters? I think if you go into google
and search for z5 interpreters or something, then you may find some
stuff. Or there are plenty of MUDs, you can even set up your own, if you
compile something like TBAMUD, or CIRCLE.

HTH.