New Developer working on MS SAPI

[Thomas Lloyd]

Hi All, 


This is just a heads up that I have joined in on the development of
speech dispatcher. My name is Thomas Lloyd and i am a real-time /
embedded software developer from the UK. I lost about 80% of my sight in
2005 and have now turned my skills toward helping others in similar
situations.

I am currently working on getting SAPI to work under Linux. I am
specifically working on Ubuntu 8.04 but the development i am doing has
the potential to be implemented under any platform supporting WINE.

What i have done and how:

I am creating an interface directly into the speech interface. I have
SAPI installed under wine in Ubuntu. From there i am using TCL and
freewrap to write and compile a stand alone executable that runs under
wine that opens communication channels with the Linux using stdin and
stdout. 

Currently I have an executable that speaks using SAPI using wine and
Microsoft speech engine in Ubuntu. I have also installed an additional
speech engines from NeoSpeech VWKate and once selected it will use any
installed speech engine.

Main Tasks:
1. Speech Dispatcher driver - Hope to get help/pointers from you guys
2. SAPI Installation & Config - Fix Wine or create own installer to
solve current problems with Wine
3. Middleware - tcl script development on going
4. Package - put it all into something that can be installed, anyone
with experience of this would be useful.

ToDo Breakdown:
1. Create stdin file event handeler - Not Started
2. Create dispatch code for stdout - Not Started
3. Rate, volume, voice, sound device - In Progress
4. Event reporting - Researchig
5. Read SPI specification - Researching
6. Create network enable option - In Progress
7. Integrate tcom into standalone executable - Done
   7a. Create install for C++ library to /system32 - Not Started
8. Install SAPI on Ubuntu - Broken but Jimmied - In Progress
   8a. Create standalone installation package - Not Started
   8b. Identify and generate filelist - In Progress
   8c. Identify SAPI registry entries & Reproduce - In Progress 
9. Test SAPI 4/5 Install Packages - 4 Tested
   - 3 x Default MS Engine SDK 5.1 - Working
   - VWKate Neospeech - Working
10. Come up with a way to configure Wine sound in an accessible way

There are still lots of things to do and things that i have not thought
of or yet considered so if anyone has any ideas wants to lend a hand etc
please get in contact.

Tom