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"gewg_" writes:

Some of you may know Ken Starks as an advocate for those people (especially kids) who can't afford a computer of their own. In the process of placing used computers with those folks, Ken and his organization use Linux to cut costs and to avoid proprietary gotchas. As such, you may also know him as an advocate for FOSS.

I have mentioned previously that earlier this year, in his ongoing bout with cancer, Ken had his larynx removed.

As a kid, Ken had a frightening experience due to a guy using one of those buzzers pressed against his throat to "speak". Ken doesn't want any part of freaking out any kids in that way. He has been looking for an out-of-the-box text-to-speech app that runs under Linux.

What Ken has found is that, while there are several nice text-to-speech apps for Android, the state of text-to-speech for Desktop Linux is very sad. The developers of FOSS TTS apps tend to reach a state of suits-my-needs and leave it there.

Someone who has a bit of experience setting up software, is adept with a search engine, and has patience can install one of the existing FOSS TTS apps and get that working at a useful level. A nice out-of-the-box experience for Joe Average, however, has been lacking up to now. Ken has been trying to find developers who can bring MaryTTS to a state of usefulness and ease that will make it on par with the experience you would expect from a payware app.

Via his column at FOSS Force, Ken now reports:

[More after the break.]

Although the numbers behind the name do not reflect it, the currently-named "SpeechLess" front end for MaryTTS is now being released as beta software. I was able to assemble a three man team to create a GUI and, to my way of thinking, it has come along nicely. Although the demo is web-based, these guys have been able to construct it so the entire thing is local. That means little to no latency between hitting Enter and having the text replicated to speech.

I've talked at length about how TTS in the Linuxsphere is less than user-friendly at about every turn. Our goal is to create a front end that makes MaryTTS easy to use for everyone. We're getting there.

[...] The quality of the voices [in our current beta release is] acceptable, especially when measured against the majority of voices already available in Linux TTS applications.

[...] A bit of assistance here. Who can create a butler-type graphic character to represent the current application? The name "speechless" is only temporary. We'll decide on a more permanent name once you show us a great servant for the people.

Does the improvement/expansion of the catalog of FOSS apps interest you? Would an improved version of this specific Linux-compatible project be of use to you? Can you be a beta tester and supply feedback? Even better: Do you know someone who also has this disability and can be a beta tester? Can you lend your software development talents to the effort or do you know of someone who would be interested?

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