[DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?

Wed Feb 1 11:38:19 EST 2012

I think "Legal" went out the window.  I mean who owns the 4.40 Speak  
Window?  Heck, if I knew that, I'd buy the rights to sell the thing.   But 
because no one knows, I just give it out for free.

SNOOPI BOTTEN 

In a message dated 2/1/2012 10:34:39 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
edbruckert at gmail.com writes:

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_ 
(mailto: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_ 
(mailto:pitermach at gmail.com) >
To: "DECtalk Discussions"  <_dectalk at bluegrasspals.com_ 
(mailto: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_ (tel:2012-02-01%2013) :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_ 
(mailto:pitermach at gmail.com) >
To: "DECtalk Discussions"  <_dectalk at bluegrasspals.com_ 
(mailto: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_ (tel:2012-02-01%2003) :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_ 
(mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com) 
[mailto:_dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com_ 
(mailto: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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