[DECtalk] DECtalk for Linux

[Corine Bickley]

Thanks for your question, Tony.
I'll ask our programmer Peter to look into the possibility. Snoopi
Botten, Enable's Chief Communications Officer, will keep you posted on
our progress.
corine bickley

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Tony Baechler <tony at baechler.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I know I'm not the only one interested in this.  I and someone else are
> looking for a software DECtalk for Linux.  There used to be TTSynth, but
> the site, ttsynth.com is dead.  Unfortunately, Linux can't use SAPI
> voices.  There is a community of users using Speakup and Gnome Orca
> which are screen readers for Linux.  They don't like the ESpeak voices.
> While I can tolerate ESpeak and I have a serial port, Orca can
> apparently only use software speech unless you use different speech
> drivers.  I would very much like to get a software DECtalk that works
> with both Speakup and Orca.
>
> I'm not a programmer and I have no idea what the technical issues
> involved are, but I know that it's completely different than SAPI.  I
> also know it can be done because TTSynth sold for $75 when it was
> available.  Apparently, there is software called Speech Dispatcher which
> acts as a speech server and connects the client, like Speakup to the
> software synthesizer, like Festival or ESpeak.  There's a program called
> a connector which gets the speech from the synthesizer to the client or
> something.  I'm unfortunately really not that familiar with the
> details.  If any of the developers could either contact me privately or
> join the Speakup list, they could get lots of feedback.  The Speakup
> developers would be the ones to ask about the connector and Speech
> Dispatcher.  I would be happy to test a Linux version.  I'm running
> Debian testing.
>
> You can contact me at tony.baechler at gmail.com.  The Speakup list is at
> <http://linux-speakup.org/>.
>
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