GNUstep Weekly Editorial 15-03-2002

[dennis]

                            Editorial 15 March 2002
                                       
   Your editor believed it was time to do some testing on the different
   Objective-C window managers (WOOM and Interface). Currently both are
   for developers only. I was not able to get WOOM compiled with a CVS
   version of GNUstep, while Interface did compile and work.
   
   I will be following both projects closely and as soon as one of them
   hits the 'user' state, I'll get back on this subject. As for now, keep
   on using Window Maker, or help one of the projects out by testing,
   submitting bug-reports, and fixes, or just cheer up the coders.
   
Mailing lists

   In reaction to the last Objective-C++ notes regarding chimera, Stan
   Shebs from Apple reports he is trying the Apple Objective-C++ patches
   against the gcc compiler on Linux, while also Pedro Ivo Andrade
   Tavares is trying to get the patched gcc up and running. Seems like
   the incorporation of Objective-C++ in gcc is getting arond.
   
   Traditional Chinese support is on it's way with a great big thanks to
   Yen-Ju Chen
   
   Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf wrote a little script called preflight.sh that
   checks your system for GNUstep compliance. It's in the early stages,
   but has a lot of promises.
   
   A little note from Adam Fedor almost went by unnoticed. So I provide
   the message, with a little editing here:
   The following project was recently donated to GNU, and apparently will
   become the 'official' speech program (and possible speech recognition)
   program of GNU. I think the source is now on savannah or soon will be.
   -------
   The project is to take an existing text-to-speech package and
   ancillary tools, apps, etc, as written for the NeXTSTEP 3.xx operating
   system by myself and colleagues, convert it to the GNU/Linux system,
   and make it available under a GPL.
   The package is based on several innovations, including: an
   acoustic-tube simulation of the vocal tract (instead of a formant
   resonance model); control of the behaviour of this tool using the DRM
   model due to Carre; creation and delivery of the necessary
   articulatory parameters derived from ordinary text; the interactive
   creation and manipulation of rules to create parameters from ordinary
   text as required to improve speech quality and create databases for
   different languages; and the interactive exploration of tube model
   control for demonstration and parameter creation purposes. There are a
   number of ancillary components such as a 70,000 word pronouncing
   dictionary, letter-to-sound rules for words not in the dictionary, a
   service application to provide speech services to arbitrary
   applications on a GNU/Linux machine, a Pronunciation Editor to allow
   users to add words to the dictionary, and various tools and documents
   as required to support development of the system and applications with
   embedded speech synthesis capability (such as aids for the visually
   disabled).
   The basic tube model has already been ported to GNU/Linux. The
   remainder has to *be* ported, using GNUstep facilities and other
   techniques. Some papers relevant to the work can be viewed at
   http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~hill/ A CD-R with all the initial
   material except the ported tube model was provided to Richard Stallman
   by courier.
   
Code changes

   Richard Frith-Macdonald went on to get GNUstep compiled on Windows and
   has added some changes to gnustep-make to get it working through
   cygwin.
   
   In gnustep-base Adam and Richard hacked
   NSDistributedNotificationCenter, more stuff added to make builds on
   NeXTstep, OPENSTEP and Darwin function corectly and Adam set the
   versioning to development version 1.3.0
   
   Adam removed a bug that crashed gnustep-gui on Solaris, while Richard
   concentrated on NSPasteboard so cutting and pasting between different
   hosts should be better.
   
   Adam removed from gnustep-xgps XGDrawingEngine.m and .h
   
   Happy Stepping,
   Dennis Leeuw