Build a speech generating device

[Frederik Elwert]

Dear Patrick,

Am Samstag, den 30.07.2011, 14:59 +0100 schrieb Patrick Welche: 
> On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 02:22:59PM +0200, Frederik Elwert wrote:
> >       * Dasher, as a complete different approach. I might be a good
> >         replacement for a regular virtual keyboard once mobility
> >         decreases to a level where a regular keyboard is hard to handle.
> >         But it seems not to be very well maintained, it???s quite unstable
> >         and I did not manage to get all of its functionality working
> 
> I'm sorry to hear this - please let me know what problems you are having...

With the version in the Ubuntu repository I couldn’t get speech output
working, and the direct mode was unreliable (only few of the characters
were actually passed to the target application).

> We have already put together dasher running on android writing into
> talkadroid to provide mobile speech generation (both available from
> the android market place).
> 
> The most recent dasher in the git repository
> (git clone git://git.gnome.org/dasher) will use speechdispatcher or
> gnome speech if it is installed on your system, and in combination
> with "control mode" will speak what you write.

Okay, that sounds interesting. I’ll try out the latest code, maybe it
already solves the issues I had. Otherwise, I’ll report back.

In the documentation for dasher[1], it sais that it’s also possible to
speak each word or on stop, not just in control mode. But I didn’t find
any way to configure that. (But since control mode already failed, I
didn’t investigate further.)

I also just found a blog article that describes how to set up OpenMary
as a speechdispatcher module.[2] That would probably allow to integrate
dasher with OpenMary easily.

On the other hand, if I write a speech synthesis frontend for normal
keyboard use anyway, I might also just use dasher for text input and
leave the rest to that application. I’ll see what works best.

Thanks,
Frederik


[1] http://library.gnome.org/users/dasher/unstable/reallife.html.en
[2] http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2011/05/05/speak-to-me/