[DECtalk] History of Gnuspeech

[Tony Baechler]

I got this email directly from the author, David Hill.  This might shed 
light on some things, such as the 1991 copyright date and the less than 
outstanding quality.




-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [orca-list] Gnuspeech
Date: 	Sat, 24 Oct 2015 08:53:49 -0700



Hi Tony,

I am the project admin for the GNU project "gnuspeech" which was originally
developed by a U of Calgary spin-off company I started with several students
and graduate students, based on my long-standing research on speech
recognition and synthesis. The work was donated to Richard Stallman's Free
Software Foundation and turned into a full GPL GNU project when NeXT
Computer folded (NeXT eventually returning to its roots in Apple along with
Steve Jobs).

It is very gratifying to see your interest in the software. I have been
listening to some of your demos -- thanks for making them.

I notice that the speech rate is much higher than normal speech rate. I
guess this is usual when you are creating speech for assistive purposes.

I shall watch developments with interest and would be very happy to try to
answer any questions you may have.

I have posted to the Orca list a couple of times already (actually two
duplicates), but my posts have not appeared (so far) even though I joined
the list.

You may be interested in this paper describing an assistive device that was
developed in my university lab:

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/papers/ieee-touch-n-talk-1988.pdf

It provided proprioceptive and tactile cues that substituted for the visual
cues used by normally sighted people, as well as speech and a variety of
gestural commands.

David Hill

On Oct 24, 2015, at 1:46 30AM, Tony Baechler wrote:

> Yes, it was mentioned on the Orca list.  I've been playing with it and
> created some demo mp3 files here:
>
> http://classicradio.us/iso/
>
> If that link doesn't work, try here instead:
>
> http://classicradio.us/gnuspeech/
>
> I plan to move the demos into their own directory and will add demos of
> the other voices.  I'll also use a different piece of sample text.  For a
> large body of text using the default male voice, listen to
> gnuspeech_gpl.mp3. It's the full GPL and should give you a good idea of
> the overall speech quality and inflection.  While I have certainly heard
> nicer sounding speech, two things I really like about it are its very
> small footprint and it doesn't mispronounce most English words, unlike
> most other synthesizers.
>
> On 10/23/2015 6:07 AM, Mallard wrote:
>> Hello list,
>>
>> My son discovered this project the other day, and suggested I should point
>> you people to it.
>>
>> Has anyone heard of it, and is anyone thinking of helping with it?
>>
>> ADJ3798-KD
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Ollie
>> _______________________________________________
> _______________________________________________
> orca-list mailing list
> orca-list at gnome.org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
> Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
> GNOME Universal Access guide:
> https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html
> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
>