[Kde-accessibility] Fwd: Re: paraphlegic KDE support

[Milan Zamazal]

>>>>> "WW" == Willie Walker <William.Walker at Sun.COM> writes:

    WW> Sphinx-4 will get you both n-Gram and CFG grammars, but it is in
    WW> Java, which seems to cause a curious allergic reaction around
    WW> these parts.  

Some of us may have Java allergy but the more important thing is that
according to information on their Web pages Sphinx-4 and FreeTTS don't
run on free software systems.  They both require two pieces of
proprietary software: JSAPI (I'm not aware about any free software
replacement) and Sun's JDK (perhaps this could be replaced with GNU
Java).  I'd personally like to test especially FreeTTS, but as long as
it can't be compiled and run on free software systems that would might
turn just into waste of time in my case.

I think the JSAPI dependency is a bigger problem, because as for JDK,
GNU Java should become compatible with Sun's JDK anyway.  Is JSAPI an
integral part of Sphinx-4 and FreeTTS or could it be possibly stripped
away?  Or perhaps it would suffice to reimplement just a small subset of
JSAPI?

Another option might be, as Sphinx-4 and FreeTTS are free software
themselves, to completely port them to free software environment,
whether Java based or something else.  I think this largely depends on
their development teams, whether they have interest in making them work
on free Java platforms or not.  As always, we must consider the most
efficient long-term way with our very limited resources.

Regards,

Milan Zamazal