RE: Announcing Phonemic 1.0
- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2011 23:21:42 -0400
Hmm so this is like chant but at a much younger state? (chant.net)
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andreas Stefik
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2011 5:16 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Announcing Phonemic 1.0
Hi Katherine and Alex,
Alex is basically correct, this is just a text-to-speech engine that
is compatible with lots of systems and unifies the APIs, which are a
horrible pain separately (e.g., COM hacking, tons of incompatible
libraries, system dependent and complicated builds). Most of these
systems are also very incompatible. So, for example, a pitch shift or
a speed change with system X may not "sound the same" as with system
Y. In phonemic, we've generated some simple little equations that
match all the engines up, by ear, as best as we can.
Besides phonemic, we've actually written our own replacement for the
Java Access Bridge behind the scenes for Sodbeans, however, we haven't
made that available yet as a separate Jar, and it doesn't work quite
the same as the normal JAB. It's a bit quirky and painfully
complicated, which is why we haven't pulled it out of Sodbeans yet,
but it works.
One nice thing about phonemic is that if you have a screen reader up
and running, it just works with it. If you don't, it self voices, a
feature that folks have asked us to have in there many times.
Hope that helps,
Stefik
On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Alex Hall <mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It sounds more like a centralized way to make your application speak.
> Some applications make extensive use of text sent directly to a screen
> reader, such as GMA's Solitaire games or the Qwitter Twitter client
> (http://www.qwitter-client.net). The latter has no dialogs at all,
> except for settings, and relies on the active screen reader being made
> to speak new tweets with no visual element at all. Phonemic sounds
> like a way to do this in java; no applications will become accessible
> because of this, though it is now possible to write screen
> reader-friendly applications in the sense that the application can be
> made to speak what it has to say. However, gui programs in java will
> be just as inaccessible as they are now when you look at it from a gui
> standpoint since this just offers developers a way to interface with
> the speech output of screen readers and not to actually give the
> reader more information about on-screen controls.
>
> On 6/1/11, Katherine Moss <Katherine.Moss@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> So for folks using this, does it mean that the java access bridge is no
>> longer necessary? That's the way I'm seeing it, but I may be wrong.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andreas
Stefik
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2011 4:11 PM
>> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Announcing Phonemic 1.0
>>
>> All,
>>
>> My team would would like to officially announce the release of software
>> product called Phonemic. Phonemic 1.0 is an open-source library for doing
>> screen-reader compatible text-to-speech in Java.
>> Phonemic can be used on a host of operating systems and is the same
>> text-to-speech engine used in the Sodbeans project and in the Hop
>> programming language. It can be downloaded from our sourceforge page:
>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/phonemic/
>>
>> Here are our official release notes:
>>
>> = Phonemic version 1.0, June 1, 2011 =
>>
>> == Introduction ==
>> This is the first official release of the Phonemic speech library.
>> Phonemic is a Java library that allows its users to write cross-platform
>> speaking applications.
>>
>> == Big Features ==
>> * Support for many major speech systems, including Microsoft SAPI, JAWS,
>> NVDA, VoiceOver and ORCA.
>> * Provides a single API to communicate with all engines.
>> * Support for various types of speech modifications (when available):
>> * Volume control
>> * Pitch control (either manually or automatically through the
speakChar
>> functions).
>> * Speed control
>> * Speech modifications are consistent across engines.
>> * Support for blocking speech calls (when available).
>> * Ability to query an engine for its features.
>> * Ability to switch engines on the fly (Windows and Mac OS X only).
>> * A queuing system that enables the use of speech priorities, even when
not
>> supported natively by the engine.
>> * A speech processing mechanism to enable advanced pre-processing of
speech
>> before it is sent to an engine.
>> * Ability to query for / change voice when supported by the engine.
>>
>> == Supported Engines ==
>> Phonemic currently supports the following platforms and speech engines:
>>
>> * Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7:
>> * Microsoft Speech API (SAPI)
>> * JAWS
>> * NVDA
>> * Mac OS X
>> * Carbon (on Intel Macs only), the same speech interface used by
VoiceOver.
>> * The `say' command
>> * Linux
>> * speech-dispatcher (available by default on Vinux and Ubuntu), the
same
>> speech interface used by ORCA.
>>
>> == Usage ==
>> The Phonemic library is a .jar file that must be included in your java
>> project. In addition to the phonemic.jar file, your program must include
the
>> appropriate JNI libraries for the various platforms you intend to
support.
>> These files can be found under the jni directory.
>> For more information on how to use Phonemic, see the wiki page:
>> https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/phonemic/wiki/UsingPhonemic
>>
>> The libraries are as follows. Note that if you do not intend to support a
>> particular platform, you do not have to include its libraries in your
>> distribution.
>>
>> * Windows XP (32-bit only), Windows Vista and Windows 7
>> * Interop.SpeechLib.5.3.dll (SAPI supporting DLLs)
>> * SappyJNI.dll (SAPI, JAWS and NVDA support, 32-bit)
>> * SappyJNI64.dll (SAPI, JAWS and NVDA support, 64-bit)
>> * nvdaControllerClient[32|64].dll (NVDA support)
>> * Mac OS X
>> * libCarbonSpeakJNI.jnilib (Carbon support)
>> * Linux
>> * libLinuxSpeakJNI.so (speech-dispatcher support)
>>
>> A simple demo application is included as a Netbeans project under the
>> example directory.
>>
>> == Build Notes ==
>> Although libraries come with Phonemic pre-built, should you want to
modify
>> any of them, it is necessary to use the following systems.
>>
>> * Windows
>> * To modify the Windows DLL (SappyJNI/SappyJNI64.dll), Visual
Studio
>> 2008 must be used. The libraries will build on Visual Studio 2010,
however,
>> they will not run on all systems.
>> * Mac OS X
>> * To modify the Carbon speech library, libCarbonSpeakJNI.jnilib,
you must
>> use XCode 3. (3.2.1 preferred) XCode 4 has not been tested.
>> * Linux
>> * The Linux library (libLinuxSpeakJNI.so) can be loaded as a
standard
>> Netbeans project.
>>
>> I would like to thank my team here for their work on the project,
including
>> Kim Slattery, Susanna Siebert, Melissa Stefik, and especially Jeff
Wilson,
>> the lead developer on this project.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Andreas Stefik, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Computer Science
>> Southern Illinois University Edwardsville __________ View the list's
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>
>
> --
> Have a great day,
> Alex (msg sent from GMail website)
> mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap
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