Possible work around to the hardware synthesizer problem

[Shawn Kirkpatrick]

I thought of writing a speechdispatcher driver but there were some problems. 
When I've tried speechdispatcher with software speech there were lags and 
little glitches. I'm not sure if these were being introduced by 
speechdispatcher, speechd-up, or some combination of the two. Also, my 
version of speechdispatcher has a nasty habbit of segfaulting, not sure why.
I don't think this would solve the indexing problem anyway, as far as I
know speechd-up uses speakup's software synth driver and that doesn't 
support indexing, or has this changed? I also think the less layers you have 
between speakup and the synth the better, one program is probably better 
than two.
What I'd really like to do, if I ever have the time, is write a speach 
daemon to replace this whole mess. Something like speechdispatcher but with 
more modularity. There could be modules for output, allowing hardware and 
software synth support. Modules for input, for various forms of input like 
speechdispatcher compatibility, speakup, fifo, or anything else that might 
be needed. Modules for conversion, allowing things like a word dictionary, 
number processing, etc. The main goal of the program would be to get fast, 
responsive speech from whatever synth the user chooses to use.
I think this would be a worthwhile project it would just require time to 
write.

On Fri, 26 Feb 2016, covici at ccs.covici.com wrote:

> Shawn, maybe it might be easier and more universal to write a speech
> dispatcher driver instead?  That way, if you use speechd-up, indexing
> would work.  What do you think?
>
> Shawn Kirkpatrick <shawn at shawnk.ca> wrote:
>
>> I've written a program that will allow hardware synthesizers to be
>> used with speakup even thoe the serial support seems to be currently
>> broken. I wrote this program about a year ago when I thought this
>> problem would be only temporary. Since it seems like the hardware
>> synthesizer support is still broken and isn't going to be fixed
>> anytime soon I thought I'd put it out there in case it can be of some
>> use.
>> The program is called speakupbridge.
>> speakupbridge is a program which makes it possible for speakup to use
>> external serial, parallel, or usb synthesizers. It does this by reading
>> speakup's softsynth device and passing the text to the synthesizer.
>> speakupbridge has the following features:
>> * The ability to communicate with any device that can accept a string
>> of text using a /dev interface.
>> * The ability to define the commands used by the synthesizer in a
>> user-editable configuration file.
>> * Multiple synthesizer definitions in a single configuration file.
>> * Change the pronunciation of words using a dictionary file (a feature
>> speakup
>> really should do itself).
>> * Save and reload speakup settings for each defined synthesizer.
>> For more information or to download the program please visit:
>> http://www.shawnk.ca/speakup
>> I haven't had a lot of time to work on or test this code lately so
>> there's likely to be some rough spots. You'll have to compile the code
>> but that should be easy enough. I've tested this with my serial Artic
>> transport synthesizer and it seems to work. I don't use speakup
>> regularly thoe (too many other missing/bbroken features) so this
>> program really hasn't had any hard testing.
>> This solution isn't perfect, you still won't get kernel messages from
>> boot up but it least it should be possible to use a hardware
>> synthesizer once the system is started and that's probably better than
>> nothing at all.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Speakup mailing list
>> Speakup at linux-speakup.org
>> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>
>
> -- 
> Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
> How do
> you spend it?
>
>         John Covici
>         covici at ccs.covici.com
>