Agreed. Your point and that of Kirk W. are good ones. Maybe a good compromise would be to have speakup be able to use a hardware synth at bootup if present, but continue to boot and look for a software synth after bootup if no hardware synth is found. I could live with that. Chuck On Tue, 12 Dec 2000, Janina Sajka wrote: > But it doesn't need to be an either or. Why can't we have both and? > > On Tue, 12 Dec 2000, Charles Hallenbeck wrote: > > > Excellent points, Brian. There is one more point to be made - a software > > synthesizer is not only demanding of memory but of CPU power. That means > > if speakup relied on a software synthesizer it would not run on minimum > > systems, and there is a lot of need for minimum systems to be accessible, > > IMHO. > > Ch;uck > > > > > > On Tue, 12 Dec 2000, Brian Borowski wrote: > > > > > There's been a thread about speakup and ViaVoice and writing the code to > > > make this work. I wanted to point out a few things about this idea, that > > > are going to have to be worked out. > > > > > > * ViaVoice is a software synthesizer and the kernel has to be running, > > > and most of the other parts of linux have to be operational before > > > anything can be done with a software synthesizer, unless it gets totally > > > built into the kernel; that could make a kernel huge, and would also > > > require that sound card stuff (there are very many sound cards out there), > > > be loaded into the kernel as well. > > > > > > * You would miss the real-time boot-up stuff from the kernel, a very > > > important feature, in my opinion, especially when trying to figure out > > > what is going on when something is not working as it should be, or when > > > you're trying to build a kernel and something isn't quite working write. > > > You could make use of the kernel message buffer to have the software > > > synthesizer speak the startup messages after the fact, but if there was a > > > failure during bootup; you would never get the opportunity to hear > > > anything at all, because you'd never get the speech started up. > > > > > > * Then, finally, there's another thing, the kernel is open source, > > > speakup is open source, the information is available for the software > > > synthesizer API, and perhaps, with some imagination, someone can figure > > > out a solution for the above two points. If someone really wants this > > > badly enough, why can't they put some effort into coding for this project. > > > > > > There's more than enough work with the normal speakup development to keep > > > a few Kirks busy, without even worrying about ViaVoice, so I suspect, that > > > this is one of those projects that someone else will have to do. If > > > there's no one else to do it; it probably won't get done for a very long > > > time. > > > > > > Brian Borowski > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Speakup mailing list > > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > > > > My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh > > The reverse side also has a reverse side. > > -- Japanese proverb > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Speakup mailing list > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh The reverse side also has a reverse side. -- Japanese proverb
