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

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

The thing is, assuming Chime is using the Paul voice, even if Speakup 
for some reason just sent [:np] that would be enough to not only select 
the Paul voice again, but also reset the voice parameters to their 
default, probably with the exception of rate. If everything is going 
back to power-on defaults, that sounds to me like something may be going 
on within the DECtalk unit itself to cause such a soft reset.

I have no idea about the DECtalk USB, but IIRC the DECtalk Express does 
not have any non volatile RAM, although it does have Flash storage for 
firmware upgrades.

Jayson

On 9/19/2022 7:39 AM, Don wrote:
> 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.
>
>
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