ibmtts output module and utf8

[Lukas Loehrer]

Hynek Hanke writes ("Re: ibmtts output module and utf8"):
> I have taken out SSML because some people from Capital Accessibility
> complained that their version doesn't support SSML and they hear the

Unfortunatley, this completely killed index mark reporting in the
ibmtts modul. Maybe, we could make the SSML stripping a configuration
option.

>But I know the former developer of the output module, Gary Cramblitt, was 
>using it with
> SSML. I can't find the documentation and I am pretty confused now :)

The only comprehensive documentation for ibmtts I know of is:

http://www.wizzardsoftware.com/docs/tts.pdf

However, this file does not mention SSML support at all. One concrete problem 
is that it is unclear how
SSML index marks, which are strings, are translated into ibmtts index
marks, which are integers, or even if SSML index marks are supported
at all. There seems to be some kind of support for SSML marks. For
example, the input string:

"<speak>Hello <mark name="foobar"/> World.</speak>"

is translated by the filter into:

'Hello  `ui"foobar"  World.'

Notice the annotaition `ui, which is unfortunately not documented in
the docs mentioned above. The ibmtts output module works around this
problem by searching the input for <mark/> taks and replaces them with
calls to eciInsertIndex().

> Lukas, please, where can I get this eci.ini? The .deb package I have
> for testing doesn't contain this file.

The eci.ini file contains information about the installed languages,
input filters and other things I do not understand. It should be
generated in the postinstall script in
/var/opt/IBM/ibmtts/cfg/eci.ini. If not, maybe, your .deb was created
with alien from an .rpm without the -c option. I can sen you
information how to generate the file manually.

As for SSML support: It seems to be provided by the file:

/opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/ssmlfilter.so

I have the following at the beginning of my eci.ini file:

[LanguageIndependent]
autoLoadFilter=
Desc_Filter1=IBM SSML Filter
Path_Filter1=/opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/ssmlfilter.so

This was generated in the postinstall script of the main ibmtts package
like this:

/opt/IBM/ibmtts/bin/inifilter /filter:1 /path:/opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/ssmlfilter.so 
/lang:all /ECIINI:/var/opt/IBM/ibmtts/cfg/ /name:"IBM SSML Filter" /autoload:n

The weird thing with the above is that the SSML filter seems to get
activated as as soon as an input string to eciAddText() starts with
<speak>, even though autoloading of the SSML filter is disabled by the
above settings. Also, as soon as the SSML filter is activated, the
expected input encoding apparently chages from cp1252 to utf-8.
Moreover, once the filter is active, it remains active.

Best regards, Lukas