[Kde-accessibility] [Announce] Revisions to KDE Text-to-Speech
System (KTTS)
Bill Haneman
Bill.Haneman at Sun.COM
Mon Nov 15 14:24:20 CET 2004
Paul:
When I say "speeding up" I am talking about the stretch parameter, i.e.
the speech rate in words-per-minute, not performance issues. In order
for a TTS engine to be used effectively by screenreaders it must support
faster-than-natural speech.
- Bill
On Mon, 2004-11-15 at 13:15, Paul Giannaros wrote:
> I'm guessings it's just start up time. Once tts systems that read text
> from STDIN (Festival Int) are inited then they should be alrite.
>
>
>
> On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 11:56:32 +0000, Bill Haneman <bill.haneman at sun.com> wrote:
> > The lack of stretch parameters is a serious issue for blind users, who
> > typically care a lot about bandwidth and may wish to use quite high TTS
> > rates. Is there an alternative method of speeding up the MultiSyn
> > voices?
> >
> > Bill
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, 2004-11-13 at 05:13, Gary Cramblitt wrote:
> > > A number of changes have been committed to CVS for KTTSD and the KDE
> > > Text-to-Speech system. Chief among them is support for Festival 2.0 and
> > > MultiSyn voices.
> > >
> > > If you have not tried Festival 2.0 (currently 1.95 beta) and the new MultiSyn
> > > voices, you are in for a treat. The voices are very natural sounding,
> > > sometimes indistinguishable from a human voice. Congrats to the Festival
> > > team for a job very well done indeed.
> > >
> > > In addition, Festival is now free for any purpose, commercial or
> > > non-commercial alike. See Festival website for details.
> > >
> > > That's the good news. Now the bad news. The MultiSyn voices are huge and
> > > typically require 5 to 15 seconds to load. Furthermore, if the MultiSyn
> > > voices are the only voices you have installed, you pay this penalty each time
> > > Festival is started. To deal with this, KTTS now offers the option to start
> > > Festival and load voices when KTTSD is started, rather than waiting until the
> > > first use of the synth.
> > >
> > > Synthesis of sentences also takes slightly longer than for other voices.
> > > Because KTTSD endeavors to keep the synth busy while simultaneously playing
> > > already synth'ed sentences, this is not too bad, but does cause a noticeable
> > > delay for the first sentence.
> > >
> > > The datadir parameter is no longer supported in Festival 2.0, and the MultiSyn
> > > voices are not expected to be in the voices/ directory. Instead, they are in
> > > the voices-multisyn/ directory, while the old voices remain in the voices/
> > > directory. Accordingly, the Festival Interactive configuration dialog no
> > > longer asks for the path to the voices directory. Instead, it asks for the
> > > path to the Festival executable, and queries Festival itself for the
> > > available voice files. As a side benefit, this permits you to install both
> > > the old and new Festival and configure one or more Talkers for each one.
> > > Because the query can take a long time (up to 15 seconds, but usually 5 to 6
> > > seconds), a Cancel button is offered for users who wish not to wait. (Tip:
> > > If you want to avoid long query times, install one of the diphone voices in
> > > addition to the MultiSyn voices, such as kal_diphone.)
> > >
> > > At present, only two MultiSyn voices are available -- Canadian English and
> > > Scottish English -- but IMHO, this new technology is so impressive that
> > > additional languages are sure to come soon.
> > >
> > > The MultiSyn voices seem to ignore the Duration_Stretch parameter, so for
> > > these voices, the Speed settings in the Festival Interactive configuration
> > > dialog are disabled.
> > >
> > > Several other enhancements and bug fixes have been made. See the ChangeLog
> > > below.
> > >
> > > KTTS is currently available in KDE CVS, kdenonbeta module, directory kttsd.
> > > See
> > >
> > > http://developer.kde.org/source/anoncvs.html
> > >
> > > Nightly tarballs of the kdenonbeta module (large) are available at
> > >
> > > ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/latest/kdenonbeta.tar.bz2
> > >
> > > Festival 1.95beta is available at
> > >
> > > http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/download.html
> > >
> > > If the Talker configuration dialogs seem to be misbehaving for you, please do
> > > the following:
> > >
> > > 1. Exit KTTSMgr and killall kttsd.
> > > 2. Run clean_obsolete.sh in the kttsd root directory.
> > > 3. Reinstall KTTS, i.e., make install.
> > > 4. Delete $HOME/.kde/share/config/kttsdrc
> > > 5. Start KTTSMgr and reconfigure your Talkers. Be sure to click Apply!
> > >
> > > Since these changes required code changes throughout KTTS, I'm sure there are
> > > a few bugs lurking. Feedback is appreciated.
> > >
> > > ChangeLog
> > > ---------------
> > >
> > > 2004-11-11 Gary Cramblitt (PhantomsDad) <garycramblitt at comcast.net>
> > > * Support for Festival 2.0. and Festival MultiSyn voices in
> > > FestivalInt plugin.
> > > * Query Festival for available voices, rather than scanning for
> > > directories.
> > > * Support for multiple versions of Festival executable. Now asks for
> > > EXE path rather
> > > than voices path.
> > > * Allow preload of Festival voices that take a long time to load.
> > > If set, Festival is started when KTTSD starts and the voice is
> > > loaded.
> > > * When stopText() is called and FestivalInt plugin is synthing (not
> > > saying) using
> > > a pre-loaded voice, instead of killing Festival, which would cost
> > > hugely in
> > > re-startup time, Festival is allowed to finish synthing and result
> > > is discarded.
> > > This improves performance when rewinding/fastforwarding.
> > > * Corrected FestivalInt voices file as to voice descriptions and
> > > languages.
> > > Added MultiSyn voices.
> > > * Added accelerators and WhatsThis help to FestivalInt, Command, Epos,
> > > Flite, and Hadifix
> > > configuration dialogs.
> > > * Added modal, cancelable, progress dialog while Testing in
> > > FestivalInt, Command, Epos,
> > > Flite, FreeTTS, and Hadifix configuration dialogs.
> > > This prevents a crash when user clicks OK or Cancel before test has
> > > completed.
> > > * Command plugin always displays configuration dialog when added,
> > > i.e., never
> > > autoconfigs.
> > > * Speed adjustment disabled when using MultiSyn Festival voices.
> > > * Allow KTTSMgr screen to be resized to minimum size. Allow splitter
> > > to resize jobs
> > > ListView to minimum vertical size.
> > > * No longer attempt to build Festival plugin (static linking to
> > > Festival/Speech Tools
> > > libaries). User must explicitly request via ./configure
> > > --enable-kttsd-festival.
> > > Code is woefully behind, I cannot get it to work, and probably
> > > wouldn't work
> > > anymore even if I could get it to link and get past crash on first
> > > call to library.
> > > FestivalInt seems to work just fine..grc.
> > >
> > > 2004-11-10 Paul Giannaros (Cerulean)
> > > * getTalkerCodes() returning corrupted talker codes.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)
> > > KDE Text-to-Speech Maintainer
> > > http://accessibility.kde.org/developer/kttsd/index.php
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > kde-accessibility mailing list
> > > kde-accessibility at kde.org
> > > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-accessibility
> >
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> > kde-accessibility at kde.org
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> >
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