[DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?

ebruckert Bruckert edbruckert at gmail.com
Wed Feb 1 10:34:32 EST 2012


     just to be clear there are no legal versions of DECtalk in the public
domain, if there were I wouldn't have gone without a tool for years, and is
of course I have versions of DECtalk but they weren't able to work with my
screen reader.
If there weren't public domain version I would be working to partner up
with somebody and create some tools which is basically what I did with
enable cuss I needed a SAPI.
   Okay as far as versions of DECtalk that were made, there is American
English, British English, French, German, Chinese, and Korean. The quality
varies is there a lot of problems in doing this besides just creating the
phonemes.
    In addition I did a special version of DECtalk that is used by kinnor
 software which can chant the Torah and other things to prepare one for bar
mitzvah. It lacks letter to sound rules because both Hebrew and Arabic
letter to sound rules are extremely difficult because in a lot of texts
they don't write the vowels, which people can figure out but computers are
hardly data
.  As an example right in English sentence remove all the vowels and see if
her friend can figure it out,

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Raymond Grote <musicalman1 at comcast.net>wrote:

> Well, the sonic thing wasn't a real big thing at least for me, nor anyone
> else I knew that used it. It sounded strange, and I never did like dectalk
> above rates of400 or so.
> Going off topic here, I wonder if a decent British dectalk was ever made?
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pitermach" <pitermach at gmail.com>
> To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 8:47 AM
>
> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?
>
>
>  Actually yeah. The driver was written by Tyler and I sort of helped him
>> out with it. The first version only did Paul and had sonic to speed the
>> rate up even more. I asked him to add voices, and that's the newer version
>> where sonic had to be removed because it was crashing things apparently.
>>
>> On 2012-02-01 13:52, Raymond Grote wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> I was under the impression that both Dectalks were the same engine, just
>>> different versions of the driver, and the newer one supported voices but
>>> the older one didn't?
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pitermach" <pitermach at gmail.com>
>>> To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 5:43 AM
>>> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?
>>>
>>>
>>>  About the issue with the second dectalk, what happens is almost every
>>>> parameter is actually changed, except the pitch and inflection, so after
>>>> you change voices you just need to manually raise the pitch or what ever to
>>>> set it straight.
>>>>
>>>> On 2012-02-01 03:18, Blake Roberts wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Doris,
>>>>> I discovered the other day that two Dectalks for NVDA exist. I was
>>>>> able to
>>>>> try both out after obtaining them and reinstalling NVDA. Both
>>>>> NVDA-specific
>>>>> Dectalks have issues. In the first one, only Paul is available as a
>>>>> voice.
>>>>> To me, that version of Dectalk for NVDA sounds similar to 4.4, though
>>>>> I have
>>>>> no idea what DT version it is based on. The second Dectalk for NVDA
>>>>> lists
>>>>> all 9 voices, but apparently is based on another version of Dectalk.
>>>>> Some
>>>>> of those voices sound, um, different. Example: Kipp sounds like he's
>>>>> going
>>>>> through puberty or something similar. If anyone wants to experiment
>>>>> with/use
>>>>> Dectalk for NVDA, write me off-list. As far as  I know, Dectalk for
>>>>> NVDA is
>>>>> not officially supported by the NVDA developers and I don't know who
>>>>> created
>>>>> Dectalks for NVDA.
>>>>>
>>>>> Regarding Dectalk for Jaws, there is Dectalk Access32. Problem: Freedom
>>>>> Scientific broke Dectalk Access32 functionality in an earlier version
>>>>> of
>>>>> Jaws. Since a Jaws-specific version of Dectalk Access32 is no longer
>>>>> sold or
>>>>> supported by FS, I sort of understand why  Freedom Scientific won't
>>>>> fix the
>>>>> problem. Another member of this list found a workaround to make Dectalk
>>>>> Access32 work with Jaws which involves uninstalling Eloquence.
>>>>> Blake
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.**com<dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com>
>>>>> [mailto:dectalk-bounces@**bluegrasspals.com<dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com>]
>>>>> On Behalf Of Doris and Chris
>>>>> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 8:56 PM
>>>>> To: DECtalk Discussions
>>>>> Subject: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?
>>>>>
>>>>> with all the discussion of singing dectalks, it was a couple of times
>>>>> mentioned that dectalk version 4.4 is in the public domain.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there a version of this or can one be made available that works with
>>>>> screenreaders?
>>>>>
>>>>> I enjoy the dectalk songs I have heard and am amazed at the creativity
>>>>> and
>>>>> finesse and perfection that goes into those songs but this is nothing
>>>>> I have
>>>>> any interst in persuing myself .
>>>>>
>>>>> I like dectalk for its clear speech and low footprint on older systems
>>>>> and I
>>>>> would love to have a working version to use with my screenreaders,
>>>>> i.e. jaws
>>>>> and nvda. For nvda especialy it would be nice to have a free dectalk
>>>>> version. nvda comes with espeak, which is free and open source. espeak
>>>>> is
>>>>> certainly usable and I like its responsibeness but dectalk has much
>>>>> clearer
>>>>> speech and would be much easier to understand for those used to more
>>>>> human
>>>>> sounding synths.
>>>>>
>>>>> With all the time and energy devoted to making dectalk sing and talking
>>>>> about this, if there is a public domain version of dectalk available,
>>>>> could
>>>>> some of the time and energy be devoted to giving us a free dectalk to
>>>>> just
>>>>> use with screenreaders or a free sapi version?
>>>>> I do not know what would go into this but I'd like to see something
>>>>> that is
>>>>> usable for the broader masses and especialy for nvda users.
>>>>> nvda is coming of age and a decent free synth with it would be such a
>>>>> blessing!
>>>>>
>>>>> Doris
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
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