Hi Stewart, only speaking to your disability tax idea. Fully understanding that likely few here have much direct experience with these tools, there is a profound serious and expansive difference between a synthesizer, and a tts engine. for example, I believe? your hobbyists board used the dectalk later than 4.2 or so, even perhaps a dectalk 5? Grand while back I sent someone seeking the USB to your module site where they listened to the dectalk provided there. the erosion of quality is part of why so much energy is going into the recovery effort, the dectalk from your module source is not, said kindly, in the same universe as what I use, and others who have enjoyed the voice from the 80s and 90s prefer. Then there is exactly what the dectalk USB, which goes back perhaps 15 years or more, certainly prior to the dectalk code being sold to its last owner actually does. Again, its not a tts. Instead, it becomes a talking monitor. speaking background and foreground changes, colours and characters, tracking for notifications, managing rate, pitch and speed. managing every single symbol on the screen, or not as you desire. Want to get individual numbers, or have the words for them? Want phonetic announcing of letters? How about IBM, or international business machines, even if only three letters are there? When paired with an actual, well crafted screen reader program, that is what this unit does. In multiple languages across operating systems with easy to understand voices that can even sing. Does the price tag make more sense? Kare On Mon, 24 Apr 2023, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
On 24/04/2023 00.14, Karen Lewellen wrote:
actually, I am on the dectalk mailing list
Ah, thought you might be - so you're way ahead of me.
its called the dectalk USB, sells for about $800, and can run under, systems for which there are drivers, windows for example. No one has written quality dectalk drivers for Linux that use the tool though.
Oof, the disability tax is well in evidence there. Considering that this will be based on the same Epson DECTalk chip that used to appear on hobbyist boarsd costing $100, someone's doing not badly off that. The drivers have been the hard part: the EMIC-2 DECTalk board I have has the crudest serial connection I've ever used. It's great for tiny phrases, but reading long texts is painful. It also features a loud pop every time it finishes a reading as it turns off its amplifier.
DECTalk seems to collect stories of loss. The article on TropeTrainer — https://www.inverse.com/input/features/tropetrainer-thomas-buchler-torah-sof... — a Torah recital package that went silent after its developer passed away, is quite touching.
Stewart
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