are you writing your own linux distro? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Sutherland" <wearable@xxxxxxxxx> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 8:33 PM Subject: ViaVoice Tidbits > Hmmm this is interesting regarding viavoice ... > > I really like the sound of this software synth, and it wouldn't work on > slackware 9.1, so I decided to build a custom linux system from source > (using the linuxfromscratch books). > > I determined that viavoice cannot deal with glibc 3.2.2 or higher. So I > build a system with glibc 3.2.1, but compiled all of the newer software > for it. I was hoping viavoice would just work, but it failed trying to > find a certain libstdc++ shared object. I got it working by copying the > c++ libraries from slackware 9.1 into /opt/lib/slackware and adding this > directory to ld.so.conf. It worked! Perhaps this is something that is > worth trying if you can't get viavoice working but have glibc 3.2.1 or > older. Note that I had to create the same symbolic links that patrick > used in slack9, but in the /opt/lib/slackware dir. To do so, I just > took the lines right out of his doinst.sh for that package. That's the > first interesting tidbit. > > This part is good, not only can I use the TTS, but the compiler is also > working fine with that shared object from slackware :) I am now writing > code with direct calls into the viavoice ECI API. > > Now here's another interesting tidbit. There are 3 versions of the TTS, > they are Outloud 5.0, Outloud 5.1, and TTS 5.1. I made a script that > would configure my system for any of these three on the fly. There are > only 3 files needed for viavoice TTS, the enu50.so (dictionary), the > libibmeci50.so (runtime), and the eci.ini. I made a script that will > generate the eci.ini using the inigen program supplied by IBM. > > So I was writing code, the speech kept dropping off before it finished. > I thought I was doing something wrong, or that the timing of the VV > eciSynchronize method was off. This method is supposed to return when > the synthesis is done. I kept running the same code with varying > results, sometimes it would speak the whole sentence, sometimes it > would drop the last word or two. Then I remembered I had my system > set up to switch TTS versions. I switched from TTS 5.1 to Outloud 5.1 > and the same things happened. Then I switched to Outloud-5.0 and > suddenly the synchronization problem is fixed! Using the oldest of > the three (ViaVoice_Outloud_rtk-5.0.1.0) corrected my problem. So if > your viavoice is dropping words, try this older rev. > > It may seem crazy to write code for an old unsupported product, but > it sounds so much better than festival. I'm going to test out all the > outloud API calls then decide what to do from there. One option might > be to try adapting the that software synth middleware program to work > with viavoice. Another might be to write my own voice server. And if > viavoice doesn't work I'm going to shell out the $50 for dectalk. > > -- Doug > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
