Re: [gnuspeech-contact] Re: introduction and gnuspeech questions

[D.R. Hill]

Hi Eric,

Please see below.

David Hill, Prof. Emeritus, Computer Science  |  Imagination is more       |
U. Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4       |  important than knowledge  |
address@hidden OR address@hidden   |         (Albert Einstein)  |
http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill             |  Kill your television      |

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Eric Zoerner wrote:

> Thanks for sending me detailed answers to my questions and the audio sample. 
> I would indeed be interested in getting more samples of sentences, etc. Would 
> it make sense to checkin some demo audio files into the cvs repository?

Yes, it would make sense.  There is actually one demo file there already, 
but deeply buried in the file hierarchy.  We did a "Christmas Teaser" just 
before we had finished creating version 1 of the articulatory synthesis 
system (some of the fricatives are missing).  It is a sung rendering of 
the old Burgundian carol "Pat-a-pan" with several parts and set in a room 
30 metres square (Len Manzara did his PhD on the imaging that occurs in 
large and small rooms and he composed the teaser as a lead in for the 
marketing effort that followed -- before NeXT gave up!).  You can find it 
in the TextToSpeech package areas of the repository.  The words are weird 
so here's a script:

God and man this day are one,
Even more than fife and drum;
So these instruments we play,
Tu-re-lu-re-lu, pat-a-pat-a-pan,
So these instruments we play
For a joyful Christmas day!


I'll mail some more sound files directly, bypassing the mailing list, 
because one isn't supposed to send more than 40K (which is why I really 
ought to put a bunch of files on the repository but there always seems to 
be something more imprtant to do :-(  )

> I guess I wasn't clear when I was asking about the NEXTstep software. I read 
> in the docs that you need NEXTstep to run the full suite of gnuspeech 
> software. What I'm wondering is whether it is still possible to acquire 
> NEXTstep at all and if so, where, and what kind of hardware is necessary to 
> run it? (e.g. does it run on Mac OS/X, is it possible to install it on a Mac, 
> or does it require an Intel machine, etc.).

You can still buy all the black hardware (original NeXT stuff) from Rob 
Blessin at:

        http://www.blackholeinc.com/

You probably should go for a turbo NeXTStation (including megapixel 
monitor).  They come in really inexpensive and would allow you to run 
everything we used for development (I could give you what's not on the 
repository -- special to the NeXT and mainly somewhat undocumented 
in-house utilities).  I had a spare turbo-station when Steve was doing his 
port so I gave it to him.  I do have another turbo-station (and the 
original boxes) which I might be prepared to part with, though you'd have 
to pay shipping & insurance.  I've been keeping it as a backup for my cube 
but the cube soldiers on, and the Mac and GNU/Linux are taking over, so I 
can probably risk it.  Make sure you get the Y2K update that came free 
from Apple.

[snip]

All good wishes.

david