IBMTTS on slackware

[Michael Whapples]

On Mon, 2008-06-02 at 18:47 -0400, Nick Stockton wrote:
> By the way I'd expect less support than you get with ttsynth if you go with 
> voxin *grin*.
I had come to the conclusion before that I couldn't get less support
than ttsynth has, as on the ttsynth site it says that no personal
support for the product will be given. So I came to the decission that
it is best to pay less and chance support than pay more (much more) and
know that there won't be personal support for it.
> Before I baut Voxin I sent an email asking if there was any differences 
> between ttsynth and voxin besides the name and the price and I got a email 
> back with a single line saying I should ask on the speakup list *lol*.
One thing I think might be different between the two is that ttsynth
provides the speakup connector (by the sound of it, it provides it
directly rather than working through speech-dispatcher, is that true and
how does it compare to going through speech-dispatcher).
> I guess when something is $5 you shouldn't expect people to really put their 
> hearts in to selling it to you but I don't think it would have taken long to 
> send a message back with a couple of differences between the two.
> Any how in case you want to know the main differenses between voxin and 
> ttsynth are
> voxin came in a tar file with an install script that installed the files 
> stored in a incrypted image and included debian and ubuntu .deb packages for 
> installing the speech-dispatcher module and gnome speech drivers but they 
> were already out of date by the time I had gotten them.
> Voxin did not come with the libs and header files from the IBMTTS SDK 
> included which are needed for installing the ttsynth-say, 
> spk-connect-ttsynth and the gnome speech driver so I had to download and 
> install them manualy.
> ttsynth comes in boath rpm and deb files, includes the files from the SDK 
> needed for compiling ttsynth-say spk-connect-ttsynth and the gnome speech 
> driver and the install files wern't incrypted so you can use alien just to 
> convert and install on slackware.
That encryption part is now getting me, I keep trying to enter the
passphrase and it keeps saying its wrong. I am sure slackware is
providing all the encryption stuff (cryptoloop as a module and aes
compiled in (although I have recompiled a kernel with it as a module as
well)) and I have tried installing it in GRML and get the same. I have
contacted oralux for support on this, lets see what my response is.
> *grin* that did not take long to write at all.
> I went ahead and got voxin anyway as I guessed that it would be the same 
> product rebranded and thought it would install better beeing in a tar ball 
> rather than ttsynth's rpm and deb packages.
> I was quite rong how ever I didn't know that the install files were stored 
> in an incrypted image that was mounted using the install script and I didn't 
> know that it would be missing the SDK which I think should have been 
> included in with the voxin package instead of a bunch of outdated binarys 
> stored in debian packages.
> I was able to make voxin work with slackware after a while but I'd say that 
> ttsynth had the better packages and I should have payed the extra $35 to get 
> it as it would have saved me lots of trouble.
May be I should have followed your advice, but I made the same
conclusions you had (with the extra one that surely the encryption won't
be a problem) and I spent my $5 (actually 4.29 euro) on voxin. Could you
enlighten me on the encryption problem?