Ivona module - do you want to test?

[Bohdan R . Rau]

Dnia 2008-04-03, czw o godzinie 16:01 +0200, Hynek Hanke pisze:
[...]
> I have a couple of questions:
> 
> 1) What should we do with libdumbtts? Should we maintain it
> as a separate package or should we include it into Speech Dispatcher
> as a helper library?

Good question - I really don't know. In fact this library would be used
not only with speech-dispatcher, but also with any application using
dumb synthesizers. I personally use it in my private book reader, which
communicates directly with Ivona...

May be separate package woud be better, and it's possible to include it
in speech-dispatcher package and install only when it's not installed
already? In this case the installation scripts must be changed to avoid
overwriting of language files...

Good theme to think for weekend :)

> 
> 2) Do the Ivona voices support rate and pitch changes?

Pitch is fixed in all versions of Ivona. I think the rate changes would
be supported (as it's supported in Windows SAPI version), but it's not
implemented in desktop version.

In fact the "Ivona Desktop" is the same as "Ivona Telecom", but shipped
with different licence and single 16 or 22 kHz voice. As the Telecom
version is commonly used to collaborate with Asterisk (or similar
software) and to create short pre-recorded messages, there is no need to
change rate in these applications.

I'll try to ask Ivona maintainer about this feature, but knowing the
long history of my talking with Ivo Software I don't think the IVO
company will be interested with adding extra features :(

At now the only possibility is to set preferred rate during server
startup.

Bohdan