Speakup & Speech Dispatcher

[Hynek Hanke]

> Now the real reason I am writing.  I have just finished my software
> synthesizer interface driver for speakup and have been trying to
> decide how to do the interfacing to software synths.  I either have to
> write a middleware program to drive various software synths myself or
> find some other method and speech dispatcher came to mind.  

Hi Kirk,

I'm very happy to hear from you again. Your driver for communication
with user-space applications sounds very well. Be sure we would really
like to have some interfacing from Speakup to Speech Dispatcher!

I think we have to write some simple daemon application that would
read the commands from /dev/softsynth and then send them to Speech
Dispatcher in SSIP. It would act as a Speech Dispatcher client.

This shouldn't be very difficult to write and I think I could do it
myself relatively soon.

> On a read() it will pass
> all output from the kernel interspersed with pseudo synth control
> strings based on the Doubletalk command set kind of.  I say kind of
> because it isn't exactly the same I use values 0-9 for pitch instead
> of 0-99, other than that it's identical. 

I think maybe it would be easier and clearer to pass the commands
directly in SSIP. It would also make the task of writing the interface
daemon easier. Instead of creating your own command set.

Also, I think that the Doubletalk protocol lacks some of the features
supported by SSIP, mainly the priority system. Software synthesis
is capable of doing more than the simple hardware devices and it would
be great if we could use the most of what current technology offers
(or just leave the doors open).

Even if there is no direct use for priorities & history & sound icons
right now in Speakup, it might come later. You told me that you are
thinking about some application-specific customization of Speakup. When you
implement it, Speakup will be able to distinguish different messages
as less or more important and with the Doubletalk commands, you'll
have to invent yet another command set.

I'd like to know what do you think about this?

Well, obviously, I don't know if there isn't any major obstacle to using
SSIP or it's derivative. Do you think it would be hard to replace the
current Doubetalk commands with SSIP commands or it's just a matter
of rewriting the strings here and there?

I'm CC-ing this message to address@hidden Maybe it would be
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a mail to address@hidden .

Thanks for your message 
        @ nice rest of the Christmas holiday,
Hynek