Orca, Gnome-speech and eSpeak: using voice variants

Is there any way to select a varient of an eSpeak voice in
Orca? For
example, I want Orca to speak with the female en+12 voice.
Is this
possible, and if so how?

Live long and prosper,
Lorenzo
-- 
I've always found anomalies to be very relaxing. It's a
curse.
--Jadzia Dax: Star Trek Deep Space Nine (The Assignment)

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Hi Lorenzo:

The way to select the person to use is via the
"Person:" combo box on
the "Speech" tab in the Orca GUI preferences
dialog.  If it doesn't show
up in the "Person:" combo box, then you can't
select it.

Hope this helps,

Will

On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 00:50 -0400, Joseph Brouhard wrote:
> Is there any way to select a varient of an eSpeak voice
in Orca? For
> example, I want Orca to speak with the female en+12
voice. Is this
> possible, and if so how?
> 
> Live long and prosper,
> Lorenzo
> _______________________________________________
> Orca-list mailing list
> Orca-listgnome.org
> http
://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca
 for more information on Orca

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On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 09:23 -0400, Willie Walker wrote:
> Hi Lorenzo:
> 
> The way to select the person to use is via the
"Person:" combo box on
> the "Speech" tab in the Orca GUI preferences
dialog.  If it doesn't show
> up in the "Person:" combo box, then you can't
select it.
> 
That combo allows selecting the voice, not the voice
variant, they are
two separate things. I suppose this is another reason why
speech-dispatcher can be preferable to gnome-speech espeak
driver. If
gnome-speech is to correct this, either it will need to
support voice
variants in some way, or just specify the variants on each
voice and
make one large list of voices.

> Hope this helps,
> 
> Will
> 
> On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 00:50 -0400, Joseph Brouhard
wrote:
> > Is there any way to select a varient of an eSpeak
voice in Orca? For
> > example, I want Orca to speak with the female
en+12 voice. Is this
> > possible, and if so how?
> > 
> > Live long and prosper,
> > Lorenzo
> > _______________________________________________
> > Orca-list mailing list
> > Orca-listgnome.org
> > http
://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca
 for more information on Orca
> 
> 
> 

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Just to follow up on this, eSpeak has a method to get the
available
voices.  This is what the gnome-speech driver uses to
determine which
voices are available:

const espeak_VOICE **espeak_ListVoices(espeak_VOICE
*voice_spec);
/* Reads the voice files from espeak-data/voices and creates
an array of espeak_VOICE pointers.
   The list is terminated by a NULL pointer

   If voice_spec is NULL then all voices are listed.
   If voice spec is give, then only the voices which are
compatible with the voice_spec
   are listed, and they are listed in preference order.
*/

The call being done in the gnome-speech driver is:

    voices = espeak_ListVoices(NULL);

Thus, all voices should be obtained.  It appears as though
voice
variants are not returned as a part of this call, though. 
I'm not sure
if this is a bug or not.  I'm BCC'ing the eSpeak folks to
get their
opinion on this.

Will

On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 00:50 -0400, Joseph Brouhard wrote:
> Is there any way to select a varient of an eSpeak voice
in Orca? For
> example, I want Orca to speak with the female en+12
voice. Is this
> possible, and if so how?
> 
> Live long and prosper,
> Lorenzo
> _______________________________________________
> Orca-list mailing list
> Orca-listgnome.org
> http
://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca
 for more information on Orca

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 for more information on Orca

To give some information about espeak and variants, I
understand any
variant can be applied to any voice, that is what separates
the variant
data from the voice data, eg. a Lancaster accent can only be
applied to
a British voice (it would sound wrong applied to another
language) so
the Lancaster voice is made as another voice (although
building on the
standard British voice), but any voice can be made to sound
female (and
the parameters for changing to female are normally the same
for
different languages) so female is a variant. A topic along
this line was
mentioned on the nvda-dev mailing list, I suggested that may
be variant
should be controlled separately to voice (eg. it could be
done through a
tone control (to give it a generic name, which may alter
other tone
parameters for other synths if variants aren't available)).
I don't know
if all voices and variants should be listed in the voice
list as this
would present the user with one huge list which I feel would
be better
separated into two categories so the user may select the
Scotish voice
and then choose the female variant for example rather than
having to
wade through one list to find female Scotish.

As variants can be applied to any voice, I think there isn't
a function
to return variants as these are always the same regardless
of voice (eg.
always within the range 1 to 13, but I think there is a
technique you
can use to check when you have found the top one by when the
variant
becomes the same as the first one).

I hope this is useful, I think there is a full description
of this topic
on the nvda-dev list, but I am not sure if the archives for
the list are
public (hopefully they are).

From
Michael Whapples
On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 09:44 -0400, Willie Walker wrote:
> Just to follow up on this, eSpeak has a method to get
the available
> voices.  This is what the gnome-speech driver uses to
determine which
> voices are available:
> 
> const espeak_VOICE **espeak_ListVoices(espeak_VOICE
*voice_spec);
> /* Reads the voice files from espeak-data/voices and
creates an array of espeak_VOICE pointers.
>    The list is terminated by a NULL pointer
> 
>    If voice_spec is NULL then all voices are listed.
>    If voice spec is give, then only the voices which
are compatible with the voice_spec
>    are listed, and they are listed in preference
order.
> */
> 
> The call being done in the gnome-speech driver is:
> 
>     voices = espeak_ListVoices(NULL);
> 
> Thus, all voices should be obtained.  It appears as
though voice
> variants are not returned as a part of this call,
though.  I'm not sure
> if this is a bug or not.  I'm BCC'ing the eSpeak folks
to get their
> opinion on this.
> 
> Will
> 


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