Re: [gnuspeech-contact] PrEditor port

[David Hill]

Hi Eric,

Many thanks for your continuing interest.

On May 9, 2006, at 4:09 AM, Eric Zoerner wrote:

> I am considering getting my feet wet in gnuspeech development by  
> working on a port of PrEditor to Mac OS X, and perhaps adding  
> support for multiple phoneme/posture sets for different languages.  
> Also to make gnuspeech more language neutral, I would like to add  
> support for X-SAMPA in addition to keeping the IPA support. Going  
> forward I think the Webster and Trillium notations will only be  
> relevant for English.

These days it has become so easy to use IPA, I suspect, that IPA only  
could even be the route to go.  I find Webster's is quite awkward,  
sometimes misleading, and relatively unnecessary.  Is there a  
Webster's dictionary of Irish ;-)  The big advantage of the Trillium  
script is that it can be generated using a standard keyboard with no  
special software, and edited using emacs.  That's the reason it was  
developed and used.  If you have two forms of phonetic script for  
Irish, I'd rather see IPA and an extended Trillium script than IPA  
and Websters

> Am I right to assume that no one else is currently working on  
> PrEditor?

You are right, no-one is working on PrEditor (at least officially as  
part of the GNUSpeech project -- who knows what might be happening in  
the backwoods of Thailand or the deserts of China ;-). PrEditor is a  
nice project to work on.  Michael Forbes did a rewrite of PrEditor  
during the latter stages of Trillium and it was originally written by  
David Marwood (who was in Vancouver last time we were in contact, but  
I've lost touch wit him) and Vince DeMarco (who is now with Apple,  
AFAIK).  Michael is on the members list for the gnuspeech project, so  
you could contact him if you want.    He was in the last stages of a  
Physics PhD last I heard from him.  I would have guessed he's  
finished by now, but his email address should still work.  Vince  
contributes to the main Apple Cocoa developer list (cocoa- 
address@hidden) from time to time.  I should have made a note of  
his address when I saw it, but it is a standard Apple email address  
(<whatever>@apple.com), or you could post to the list and see if he  
notices.  None of them has been involved in GNUSpeech any time recently.

You will probably want me to add you to the members list at some  
point, in which case you have to get a GNU user ID and let me know  
what it is so I can add you.  You'll notice that the release date on  
the current (NeXT) version of PrEditor is August 18 1995 which is, I  
think, the latest release date of any component of the original  
system, except, perhaps, the dictionary.

All good wishes.

david