Josh Kennedy’s general blog

Hello again folks
I am angry at humanware because they will not let me share keynote gold multimedia for windows95 and keysoft for windows95. So next I will ask them to modify ESpeak and give ESpeak a keynote gold voice that is free open source. I know that if I hit upon the right modifications in ESpeak I could make it sound exactly like keynote gold speech that you get with the brailleNote. I want humanware to tell me what needs to be modified so that ESpeak will sound exactly like keynote gold speech that is on the braillenote and voicenote. I am not worried about eloquence. I can get that for $6 or so for Linux and $25 for system access and for NVDA its free. Hey it woul be would be cool if klango had a spell checker, supported braille displays and had a word processor and scientific calculator.

Hi
So you have seen a brailleNote and you like its software suite but you can not afford the $6000 price tag? Well I have good news for you. You can now use a similar suite of software on your pc inside of Windows or as its own system. The only thing it still lacks is grade2 braille input, back translation, and a Keynote Gold speech synthesizer.
How can you do this? You can use Vinux 3.0 with graphical interface and orca.
Humanware I need your help I need you to help us add grade2 input and back translation into Gnome with Orca and brltty. I also need you to modify ESpeak so we can have a variant that sounds exactly like keynote gold speech synthesizer on the brailleNote. Need a braille display? If you have one just plug it in and it will be autodetected and work right away. And just like a braillenote, Vinux/Ubuntu does not get viruses or spyware. It has twitter, a media player dictionary with definitions, word processor, calculator, spreadsheet, database and more. So don’t spend $6000 on a braillenote, instead just get a netbook and put Vinux onto it yourself. Its very easy to do.
Josh Kennedy

Hey,
I haven’t posted to my blog in a while. But I had a great idea and thought I’d share it with the world. I am very much hoping that all seven Harry Potteer Books get turned into radio drama; either by Focus on the Family, or perhaps the bbc would make radio dramas out of the harry potter books. The books are great read by Jim Dale and Steven Fry, but they would be even better if turned into a radio drama, by focus on the family, or by the bbc! What do you all think? if you like this idea please comment on it and write to the bbc and focus on the family to express your opinions. I for one would love to see focus on the family do radio dramas of all Harry Potter books with the same excellent quality in which the Narnia radio dramas have been done. Either that or maybe the bbc would do such radio dramas.
I’ll let this entry open for comments, of course.

Hello
Here are directions for using the google loadstone gps route generator from google maps.
step 1. go to:
http://groute.loadstone-gps.pl/index.php?l=en

step 2. tab to the starting address edit box, and put in a starting address such as:
1019 Spruce Street Denver CO 18727

all on one line.
step 3. tab to the combo box and pick either walking, by car, or by car avoiding highways.
step 4. tab to the go button and hit enter.
step 5. review your route by reading down the web page.
step 6. if using jaws, window-eyes, NVDA, or possibly Hal screen reader, hit e, for edit box or just arrow down until you see the file name, and an edit box. in this edit box you can name your route.
step 7. tab to the download route button and hit enter. a save dialog will come up so just save the route in the my documents folder, or documents folder on your hard drive.
step 8. go into your documents folder and maybe its a good idea to make a folder that has all your routes, maps and points of interest for loadstone, so now plug in your phone and copy your new route to the checkpoints folder of the phone.
step 9. when you want to use that route while navigating outside, just go load the checkpoints file from the checkpoints menu in loadstone options. and as you approach checkpoints loadstone will tell you where to go next and how far.

getting points of interest.

step 1. go to
http://groute.loadstone-gps.pl/index.php?l=en

step 2. enter a starting address, let the ending address edit box blank we don’t need it to get points of interest.
step 3. tab to the combo box and choose show pois near starting address, tab to go, hit enter.
step 4. arrow down the page, as you can see you are on a page with points of interest and checkboxes, a select all button, and a Dee-select all button. either check the boxes one by one or just hit select all. but I’m sure you want more than just 10 points, right? so just hit the next button or next page button hit select all, hit next page, hit select all, hit next page and so on until you got them all. when done, go to the file name edit box, name your database, hit the download button, and save it into your documents.
step 5. refer to my other post about loadstone to get the points of interest database imported into the phone so you can use it.

the end.

1: Download the Eloquence driver from
2: Download NVDA from www.nvda-project.org.
3A: If you are using the installed copy of NVDA, copy eloquence.py and the eloquence folder to %appdata%\nvda\synthDrivers. To do this, copy the two items, type %appdata%\nvda\synthDrivers in the address bar of Windows Explorer, press enter, and paste the items.
3B: If you are using the portable version, copy the Eloquence.py and the eloquence folder to userConfig\synthDrivers within the NVDA directory.
4: unload NVDA and reload it with control alt n. Press NVDA+N to go to the NVDQA menu, arrow to Preferences, then Synthesizer…, and choose Eloquence.

Josh wrote:
> Hi
> Where do I get the prompts from, or do they come when I download all the tools? Do the tools go in the cygwin packages folder?
>

Well you can create prompts yourself targetted at your own intend
domain.  We also have a set of 1300 prompts, called the CMU Arctic data
set, the actual prompt list is available here.

http://www.festvox.org/cmu_arctic/cmuarctic.data

We also distribute 7 high quality records of this prompt list

http://www.festvox.org/cmu_arctic/

Alan

>
> Josh Kennedy jkenn337@gmail.com http://jkenn337.klangoblog.net
>   —– Original Message —–
>   From: Alan W Black
>   To: Josh
>   Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2010 2:31 PM
>   Subject: Re: Festival voices
>
>
>   Josh wrote:
>   > could I make festival voices out of apple voices if I kept it for my own personal use and did not distribute it?
>   >
>
>   I believe that is legal, Apple may not agree with my view though.
>
>   Alan
>
>
>   >
>   > Josh Kennedy jkenn337@gmail.com http://jkenn337.klangoblog.net
>   >   —– Original Message —–
>   >   From: Alan W Black
>   >   To: Josh
>   >   Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2010 2:23 PM
>   >   Subject: Re: Festival voices
>   >
>   >
>   >   Josh wrote:
>   >   > i DON’T THINK SO BECAUSE THEY WOULD NOT SOUND EXACTLY ALIKE, AND ALSO i WOULD give them away for free.
>   >   >
>   >
>   >   I think so because it would be a derived work.  I should point out I do
>   >   have significant experience here with respect to re-using voices.  As a
>   >   tenured professor I could probably get away with it for “research”
>   >   purposes but I would not be able to distribute it without having the
>   >   original owners complain.
>   >
>   >   I should point out that having down something similar before (under
>   >   contract for the original creator of the work).  It is quite hard to do
>   >   well.
>   >
>   >   Alan
>   >
>   >
>   >   >
>   >   > Josh Kennedy jkenn337@gmail.com http://jkenn337.klangoblog.net
>   >   >   —– Original Message —–
>   >   >   From: Alan W Black
>   >   >   To: Josh
>   >   >   Cc: Alex H.
>   >   >   Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2010 2:05 PM
>   >   >   Subject: Re: Festival voices
>   >   >
>   >   >
>   >   >   Josh wrote:
>   >   >   > Hi
>   >   >   >
>   >   >   > If Allan makes a easy to follow step by step guide so blind people can make their own festival voices using nvda and cygwin under windows, or with orca in Linux, voices, I will not only give you DecTalk, I will also make festival voices out of the apple voices and keynote gold and stuff as well as long as they say I can.
>   >   >   >
>   >   >
>   >   >   Please note that making voices out of apple or dectalk voices and
>   >   >   distributing them would be illegal as I understand copyright law.
>   >   >
>   >   >   Alan
>   >   >
>   >   >
>   >   >   >
>   >   >   > Josh Kennedy jkenn337@gmail.com http://jkenn337.klangoblog.net
>   >   >   >   —– Original Message —–
>   >   >   >   From: Alex H.
>   >   >   >   To: jkenn337@gmail.com
>   >   >   >   Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 9:02 PM
>   >   >   >   Subject: Festival voices
>   >   >   >
>   >   >   >
>   >   >   >   hi,
>   >   >   >   I just sa your blog post about Festival and making your own voices
>   >   >   >   with NVDA. If you can get it working, could you do a voice using the
>   >   >   >   Dectalk 4.3 demo and upload it somewhere? It wouldn’t be as responsive
>   >   >   >   as a real dectalk synth but it would be cool to hear.
>   >   >   >   Thanks,
>   >   >   >   Alex
>   >   >
>   >
>

Hello before you read this I want to let you know that cygwin for windows works perfect with NVDA.

Josh wrote:
> Hi alan,
>
> Can you create a script for end users that would more-so automate as much as possible the building of a new voice?
> it may have prompts like
> please enter the path to your recordings, and is this a male or female voice, or are you not sure?
>

There *is* an existing description explaining what to do, which will
mostly work, many people have used it successfully.  Making it more
robust is far more work than we have time to address.

http://www.festvox.org/bsv/c3170.html#AEN3172

Alan

>
> Josh Kennedy jkenn337@gmail.com http://jkenn337.klangoblog.net

Hello

If you want to make your own voices for nvda here’s how to go about doing it. to use the voices you make you will need the nvda festival drivers and the nvda screen reader, preferably the latest main snapshot or display hooks snapshot from www.nvda-project.org

Josh wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have some questions about the festvox project.
> 1. is it possible to create festival voices under windows? if so, how? if not could I use knoppix-adriane in a virtual machine?

The voice build code does run successfully under cygwin under Windows,
though it’ll probably be much faster under Linux.

> 2. can voices be created for the flite sapi5 speech  synthesizer in windows, if so how?

Clustergen (statistical parametric voices) are well supported for
conversion to flite voices for English.  For other languages you have to
build the text support yourself in C.

> 3. Could I use a patch cord to record rare or older speech synthesizers and create festival voices based on these speech synthesizers? examples like apple alex, apple pipe organ and others.

You would be responsible for the legality of that.  Technical this can
be done, I have build synthesizers from recordings of synthesizers
before.  It mostly works, though there may be some surprises.

> 4. is there a sapi5 version of the cmu-hts voices?

Note the sapi5 support in flite almost certainly doesn’t work.  It
hasn’t been used for years and only still exists in the distribution so
that it might help someone update it.

It depends what you mean by “hts”  HTS is a different project
distributed by Nagoya Institute of Technology.  CMU Flite does not
include any support for HTS developed voices directly.  Clustergen is an
alternative method, but the best HTS voices are better (but may have
licensing restrictions).  I know people have successfully got running
HTS voices with flite, but I don’t have access to any of that code.

> 5. where do I find the 1300 or so phrases the speaker or recorded synthesizer would have to read?
> I want to make all my voices for u.s. english.

http://www.festvox.org/cmuarctic

The instructions to build a voice are in a homework I set

http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/15-492/homework/hw1/index.html

Don’t expect it to work perfectly, there is still quite an art in
building a good voice.

Alan
Josh wrote:
> Hi
>
> Is building voices accessible with linux screen readers such as orca?

I don’t know what orca is.  Often linux screen readers use either
festival or flite, but they maybe offer other support too.

> will it work in knoppix adriane, or vinux? and in windows will the tools work with NVDA or system access screen readers? Since I am blind the tools have to be accessible with screen readers. I’ll mostly make voices for american english and british english.
>

I believe flite as is doesn’t work with SAPI, and hence wont work with
any of the Windows screen readers as they usually go through SAPI or do
not offer any changing of the voice.

Under Linux there is no “SAPI” like standard, but often they are using
flite as the example voice.

Alan

hello if you want to contact lucas licensing, here is their phone number.

Phone Numbers:
4156621800

hey if you want to contact lucas arts for support, here’s the number.

Voice: 1-410-568-3670

Josh