IBMTTS on slackware

Fri Jun 6 00:26:36 EDT 2008

Funny that you should menchen that because I've noticed speech-dispatcher 
spelling stuff sometimes.
I still use it though because on my old desktop gnome-speech has alot more 
lag than speech-dispatcher and I couldnt get the IBMTTS gnome-speech server 
to use alsa.
I was thinking that maybe I hadn't played around with it enough as I had 
just set it up to try gnome and see what it was like as I use speakup for 
most stuff apart from web browsing, audio editing and voice chat.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: IBMTTS on slackware


> Well your experience seems slightly diffeent with the voxin people, I
> got a version of it sent to me which had the encrypted partition removed
> when I had contacted them with the problem of the pass phrase not
> working.
>
> Yes it would have been nice to have had the packages up to date, but as
> I am using slackware I expected to need to compile the supporting
> applications anyway for either TTSynth or voxin. There are a couple of
> things I am noticing between the different drivers. the
> speech-dispatcher one seems to very quickly decide to spell things,
> where as the gnome-speech one seems to work a lot more naturally (eg. I
> have the list set to digest mode and it comes from
> speakup-request at braille.uwo.ca, with speech-dispatcher it spells out the
> request word, where as gnome-speech says each word). Thinking about
> gnome-speech, when I recompiled it to include IBMTTS I noticed it also
> has a driver for eloquence. Why has viavoice become most talked about on
> linux, and which is most up to date with current libraries (as up to
> date as they may be, which uses the least obsolete), what are the
> differences, etc?
>
> From
> Michael Whapples
> On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 20:27 -0400, Nick Stockton wrote:
>> Well the file can be extracted with debian and ubuntu so what you could 
>> do
>> is edit the install script and see what commands it is using to mount the
>> image.
>> Then you can mount that file under Ubuntu or Maybe GRML I think it should
>> work too.
>> then copy the stuff in the mounted dir to a tempory folder and then 
>> umount
>> and delete the image.
>> After that copy the extracted files back to the place where the image had
>> been mounted I think it's the mnt dir in the voxin directory.
>> then edit the installer script and remove the mount and umount commands.
>> After that I think it would then copy the files from the dir with out
>> mounting anything and you can just make a tar ball of that package and 
>> just
>> use that one if you ever have to install again and junk the one you got 
>> from
>> voxin's site.
>> I think ttsynth is the better package but I guess when buying cheep I got
>> what I payed for but at least it does work on my debian system now that 
>> I've
>> stopped using slackware.
>> I think slackware is the most stable of all the gnu/linux flavors but I 
>> got
>> tired of having to google for packages and then googling all the packages
>> they needed to run and compiling/installing/configuring them so I use 
>> debian
>> now.
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
>> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
>> <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 6:36 PM
>> Subject: Re: IBMTTS on slackware
>>
>>
>>
>> > 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?
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Speakup mailing list
>> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> >
>> > __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
>> > signature database 3156 (20080603) __________
>> >
>> > The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>> >
>> > http://www.eset.com
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
> __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus 
> signature database 3156 (20080603) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>