[DECtalk] It's time to bust some DECtalk myths

Blake Roberts BEarlRoberts at aol.com
Sat Sep 17 11:40:21 EDT 2022


Hi list,

Jake: That is amazing that you were able to acquire DECTalk source code. 
Your message below made my day!


Here are two additional pieces of information I discovered from using 
Jake's new multilingual DECTalk 4.6 NVDA add-on which might interest 
some other list members.

1. It works with NVDA version 2022.2.2.

2. It can sing! I could never get an old DECTalk NVDA add-on which 
claimed to have singing functionality to work. When I loaded Jake's new 
DECTalk NVDA add-on and a song text file, doing a say all command caused 
it to sing the entire song. Unlike speak windows, pressing the control 
key stops singing immediately. For me, a dream has become reality!


I am so happy right now that I don't mind this DECTalk list being called 
"error in phoneme" when I encounter a message from this list in my 
inbox. I understand that happens because the list name is between 
brackets in message subject line.

Blake



On 9/17/2022 10:48 AM, Jake Gross wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> For the past couple days, I have been having a field day with some 
> DECtalk source code I got from a former Fonix Employee. The versions I 
> have sources for are 4.60, 4.60 R008, 4.62, 4.63, 4.64, and 5.0, as 
> well as Internal development tools that were used to develop various 
> parts of the engine such as the phoneme and rule tables.
>
> Version 4.60 R008 Is Especially Interesting, as this Is literally the 
> version that shipped with Window Eyes. The codebase for this 
> particular version Is based on code from late 1999, so this was the 
> 4.60 era. Modifications started on June 13 of 2003 at 8:08 PDT and It 
> was built at 9:12 PDT on the same day, and the only things that were 
> modified were some slight tweaks to the audio playback code and the 
> vocal tract model.
>
> The build log In the archive Is the build log for the DLL that shipped 
> with window eyes, as the timestamp of that DLL Is 6/13/03 9:12:21 and 
> the build log timestamp Is 6/13/03 9:12:20.
>
> 4.62 sounds like 4.61 for the most part, however It has an Interesting 
> bug with a particular word. Also, type “denissklatt” In any version of 
> DECtalk for a little easter egg.
>
> Version 4.63 uses HLSyn, so It doesn’t sound like classic DECtalk at all.
>
> I also put together a multilingual NVDA addon for DECtalk 4.6 
> <https://keybase.pub/datajake1999/Grossgang/tts/synthesizers%20for%20nvda/dectalk/DECtalk%204.6.0%20Multilingual.nvda-addon>. 
> The Included DLLs were built with Visual Studio 2005 and I disabled 
> the license checks In the code.
>
> I have uploaded all of this stuff to my keybase 
> <https://keybase.pub/datajake1999/Grossgang/tts/DECtalk%20source%20code%20archive/>, 
> and the person I was In correspondence with said It was OK If I did so.
>
> If anyone wants anything built, feel free to let me know.
>
> Have fun,
>
> Jake
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
> https://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
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