[sugar] An Update about Speech Synthesis for Sugar

[Hemant Goyal]

Hi,

It s great to see many other developers sharing the idea we have been trying
to implement right within the Sugar Environment.

We have been working on integrating speech-synthesis into Sugar for quite
some time now. You can check out our ideas here :
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Screen_Reader

We are also documenting all our ideas and requirements with respect to
Speech Synthesis in this Requirements Analysis Document here :
http://www.nsitonline.in/hemant/stuff/Speech%20Synthesis%20on%20XO%20-%20Requirements%20Analysis%20v0.3.5.pdf

It outlines some of our immediate as well as long term goals wrt
speech-synthesis on the XO. Your ideas, comments and suggestions are
welcome.

I'd like to update the list about our progress:

   1. speech-dispatcher has been selected as a speech synthesis server
   which will accept all incoming speech synthesis requests from any sugar
   activity (example: Talk N Type, Speak etc)
   2. speech-dispatcher provides a very simple to use API and client
   specific configuration management.

So whats causing the delays?

   1. speech-dispatcher is not packaged as an RPM for Fedora, so at
   present I am mostly making a RPM package so that it can be accepted by the
   Fedora community and ultimately be dropped into the OLPC Builds. You can
   track the progress here :
   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=432259 I am not an expert
   at RPM packaging and hence its taking some time at my end. I'd welcome
   anyone to assist me and help speed up the process.
   2. dotconf packages which speech-dispatcher is being packaged by my
   team mate Assim. You can check its progress here :
   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433253

Some immediate tasks that we plan to carry out once speech-dispatcher is
packaged and dropped into the OLPC builds are :

   1. Provide the "much needed" play button, with text highlight features
   as discussed by Edward.
   2. Port an AI Chatbot to the XO and hack it enough to make it speak to
   the child :).
   3. Encourage other developers to make use of speech-synthesis to make
   their activities as lively and child friendly as possible :)
   4. Explore orca and other issues to make the XO more friendly for
   blind/low-vision students

@James : We envision that speech-synthesis will surely get integrated with
Read in due time. I think it would be great if maybe Gutenberg text could be
loaded right from Read only?

I was not planning on anything so fancy.  Basically, I was frustrated
> that I had a device that would be wonderfully suited to reading
> Gutenberg etexts and no suitable program to do it with.  I have written
> such an Activity and am putting the finishing touches on it.  As I see
> it, the selling points of the Activity will be that it can display
> etexts one page at a time in a readable proportional font and remember
> what page you were on when you resume the activity.  The child can find
> his book using the Gutenberg site, save the Zip file version to the
> Journal, rename it, resume it, and start reading.  It will also be good
> sample code for new Activity developers to look at, even children,
> because it is easy to understand yet it does something that is actually
> useful.  I have written another Activity which lets you browse through a
> bunch of image files stored in a Zip file, and it also would be good
> sample code for a new developer, as well as being useful.


Warm Regards,
Hemant
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