[gnuspeech-contact] Developments in GNU/Linux speech APIs

[Jason White]

Contributors to the GNUSpeech project may be interested, by way of background,
in recent developments discussed on the Gnome-accessibility mailing list,
regarding speech synthesis APIs under GNU/Linux.

The essence of the proposal, which at this stage may or may not proceed, is to
improve Speech Dispatcher (http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd) so that it can
become the standard interface to applications such as assistive technologies
that need to generate speech output. The features of Speech Dispatcher are
described at the aforementioned Web page.

The proposal by Luke Yelavich is here:
http://www.themuso.id.au/speech/speech-dispatcher-orca-integration.txt
but the plan extends beyond Gnome and Orca to embrace the idea of using Speech
Dispatcher as a common mediator between speech synthesizers and all speaking
applications, whether running at the console level or as part of a desktop
environment.

In mentioning this plan, I am not stating a position either in support of or
in opposition to it.