[DECtalk] User dictionaries for Speak windows

Corine Bickley corine.bickley at gallaudet.edu
Tue May 17 06:48:29 EDT 2011


pronunciation issues of specific words can be fixed. Snoopi will be in
charge of dictionaries for users of the DECtalk offered by Enable. pls
keep lists of changes you need.

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Jayson Smith <ratguy at insightbb.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As for weird pronunciation issues, I think 4.2CD has a bug with words like
> cafeteria, Australia, etc. It puts the stress on the wrong syllable, and
> they just don't sound right.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Corine Bickley" <corine.bickley at gallaudet.edu>
> To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 8:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] User dictionaries for Speak windows
>
>
> Very very interesting to know (specific words pronounced differently),
> MIchael. Thank you!!
>
> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 8:19 AM, Michael Hansen <amtk62 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Corine,
>>
>> I am very excited to hear that you guys are actively developing a SAPI
>> DECtalk, and even more excited that you folks have a version of 4.3
>> available. Though I may be wrong, I think that the older you can get,
>> the better...4.3 would certainly sattisfy a lot of us, I am sure.
>> Personally, I like the DECtalk Perfect Paul as implimented on some
>> NOAA Weather Radio stations. There are a couple different versions of
>> that voice out there, and the way each version says things ("thirty"
>> for example) is different. There's something about the way newer
>> DECtalks (even the 4.3) pronounce certain sounds that does not seem
>> natural.
>>
>> On 5/16/11, Corine Bickley <corine.bickley at gallaudet.edu> wrote:
>>> What do you mean by classic? There have been many different versions
>>> of DECtalk over the years. I am most familiar with the one that Dennis
>>> Klatt used at MIT when Martha and I were members of the Speech Group
>>> there headed by Prof. Ken Stevens, You may favor a different version,
>>> perhaps one that was put out by DEC, or SmartModular, or Force, or
>>> modified by one of the companies that licensed DECtalk for sale with a
>>> particular screen reader. I don't have good information about all
>>> those versions, only my memory of the one we used at MIT.
>>>
>>> We (Enable) have a couple of versions of DECtalk that we are
>>> considering for release as "SAPI DECtalk". One older one, 4.3, has
>>> been SAPI-ized and works with jvda and JAWS, it seems, but I have to
>>> tune up the voices to match the version of DECtalk that we used at
>>> MIT. We also need to test 4.3 with various current operating systems
>>> and screen readers. The original DECtalk was written for VAX computers
>>> (sold by DEC and used at MIT). The Windows versions do not sound the
>>> same as the VAX version, due to differences in the way C code is
>>> implemented on different platforms.
>>>
>>> I'll leave it to others to compare the voice quality to versions you
>>> each use and prefer.
>>> corine
>>>
>>> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 6:18 PM, Alex H. <linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hi Corine,
>>>>
>>>> Does this mean that you have found a classic version of DECTAlk to use
>>>> for the sapi?
>>>>
>>>> Alex
>>>>
>>>> On 5/15/11, Corine Bickley <corine.bickley at gallaudet.edu> wrote:
>>>>> Snoopi will be in charge of creating user dictionaries for Enable
>>>>> products, such as SAPI DECtalk. We're not ready yet to announce the
>>>>> release of SAPI DECtalk, but hope to be soon.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Jayson Smith <ratguy at insightbb.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does anyone know how to create/generate/compile user dictionaries for
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> Speak windows? I know back in the days of the DECtalk PC, it shipped
>>>>>> with
>>>>>> software to take a properly-formatted text file and compile it into a
>>>>>> binary
>>>>>> dictionary file. I still have one of those files, and it doesn't work
>>>>>> as
>>>>>> a
>>>>>> user dictionary in Speak43. Are there tools out there to generate user
>>>>>> dictionaries, or are they pretty much just internal tools which should
>>>>>> have
>>>>>> been distributed but weren't? Snoopi, Ed, Corine, can anyone help
>>>>>> here?
>>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>>
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