[Kde-accessibility] Re: getting text to speech software ????

[Bill Haneman]

On Wed, 2004-10-06 at 12:39, Milan Zamazal wrote:
> >>>>> "BH" == Bill Haneman <Bill.Haneman at Sun.COM> writes:
> 
>     BH> I would recommend FreeTTS if you don't have a strong objection
>     BH> to Java, or Festival if you only need to do simple reading of
>     BH> text files, etc.  There are several voices available for either
>     BH> (and Festival/FreeTTS can share the same voice databases I
>     BH> believe).
> 
> Festival can actually do much more than only simple reading of text
> files and is a common part of software distributions which include KDE,
> so I think it's generally much preferable choice over FreeTTS.  Of
> course, particular requirements can make one or another TTS more better
> suited for a given purpose.

Of course Festival _can_ do more; the main reason I suggested Festival
for "simple" use rather than complex purposes is that the Festival APIs
for complex use are less well documented and a little less familiar.
(Basically you have an API using the Scheme language, or poorly
documented C++ festival APIs).  As long as you can get by using the
basic festival_server interface, I agree that festival is a good choice,
and you avoid the Java dependency.

But if you need access to the TTS engine API, I would recommend FreeTTS
instead, since Java is more familiar and the Java APIs are better
documented (and currently actively under development).  I am speaking
here from experience with both sets of APIs.

- Bill

> Regards,
> 
> Milan Zamazal
> 
> -- 
> Free software is about freedom, not about free beer.  If you care only about
> the latter, you'll end up with no freedom and no free beer.
> 
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