Speechd-el being used in LouderRouter Project

[C . M . Brannon]

"Fernando H. F. Botelho" <my.lists at f123.org> writes:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I would like to let you know about a hardware project you might find
> interesting.  The proof of concept was done with Speechd-el, and your
> participation could make a prototype  a reality.

Your project demonstrates the sorts of things that software speech can
accomplish.  
I had a similar idea years ago; I wanted to convert a diskless
workstation into a talking computer.  At the time, software speech was
not as prevalent in the Linux world.

Have you considered using espeak
as the synthesizer, instead of flite?  Here are the pros and cons, as
I see them.

Pros:
* Espeak is small; it is a good fit for embedded devices, I think.
* It is under active development, with releases coming every few
weeks.  The last release of Flite was in late 2005.
* The author (Jonathon Duddington) is in contact with the blind
community.  He posts to the speakup list every so often; he may even
be lurking here.
* Espeak supports quite a few languages already.  It seems
configurable and extensible.

Cons:
* Quality of speech.  Some of us feel that it leaves something to be
desired.  I am one of these; I used a Dectalk Express hardware
synthesizer for years, so maybe I'm spoiled.  Flite gives
acceptable output.  OTOH, some people prefer Espeak's speech to that
of Flite, so this is subjective.

-- Chris