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

[Don]

Yes, Jayson, but I doubt you will find a "Return to Initial State" command in
the character stream to the DECtalk -- or any equivalent commands.  If you did,
then you'd wonder why the SpeakUp interface still thought the old settings were
in play!  I.e., if it was telling the DECtalk to RESET, then why didn't it
reset it's own internal model of how the DECtalk was operating?

Instead, it looks like something is happening that the DECtalk can't cope
with and it results in something that behaves like a reset.  The (original)
DECtalk software is old and designed with rigid constraint in place.  For
example, it placed limits on how many characters could be in a word, how
many words in a sentence, etc.  Violating any of these constraints relies
on correct error recovery logic existing in the program.  These things tend
not to be exhaustively tested so may choke if encountered.

If the DECtalk announces itself, vocally, on a real reset (mine does; "DECtalk
version X is running"), then the fact that Chime hasn't mentioned it doing this
means it wasn't a real power-up reset.

On 9/18/2022 10:45 AM, Jayson Smith wrote:
> This definitely sounds like something is causing the synthesizer to reset
> itself, especially considering Speakup doesn't seem to know the settings have
> changed. This would result in a slight nudge of a setting changing it back to
> almost where it's supposed to be, since in most if not all cases, when a speech
> synthesizer setting is changed, the screen reader sends the exact value of the
> setting to the synthesizer, not just an up or down command.