Re: Progress with AsteR installation

[Tim Cross <tcross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jason,

The openTTS code does have a CL package that provides a speech interface. At
least, it did when it was speech-dispatcher. The code is quite simple, but was
a little limited in that it wold only work correctly with one specific version
of CL. From memory, this was either CMUCL or SBCL. 

I did provide patches to them on at least three occasions, but the last time I
looked (over 5 years ago at least), they had not been included. I'm not sure
if I still have the patches or not, but theyw ere pretty trivial and I can
easily  reproduce them. 

The SIP interface package they provide is very basic, but does provide a
simple way to get speech feedback from within a CL program. 

I also may be able to help with this down the track, but not right now. I've
got a cople of projects on the boil just now and need to focus on them.
However, once thats done, I'd like to at the very least have a look at this
software. 

regards,

Tim


> Thanks to Raman's efforts in releasing AsteR and making it run on a modern
> version of Clisp, I now have it installed, and I've tested it to the point at
> which it will read the test document included in the distribution.
> 
> Here's what I've done so far.
> 
> 1. Checked the code into a private Git repository. I like git - that's my only
> excuse.
> 
> 2. Made trivial code changes so that the directory location and the serial
> device can be specified by environment variables - not fully tested yet.
> 
> For anyone who is interested, you will currently need a DECTALK Express
> synthesizer, Emacs, and Clisp installed.
> 
> I'll gladly help anyone who meets the above prerequisites and wants to get
> AsteR running.
> 
> The next development project for AsteR would be to rework the speech code so
> that it supports an Emacspeak speech server. Also, the OpenTTS project (a fork
> of Speech-Dispatcher) apparently has a Common Lisp interface, which it may be
> possible to extend and use. OpenTTS is likely to become a significant generic
> interface to speech synthesizers under Linux and possibly other free operating
> systems.
> 
> If this is to go ahead, the project will need a maintainer and people who have
> time to work on it. I'm volunteering to help, but I'm also well aware of my
> lack of appropriate background and qualifications. I have been reading a few
> books on Lisp programming which should certainly be beneficial.
> 
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