[orca-list] Announcing the OpenTTS project, a fork of speech-dispatcher

[hackingKK]

Before this gets into a long thread, can we please take this off the list?
it was ok till announcements and congratulating the team but I think the 
discussion is not going with contect to Orca.
Perhaps the blinux could be the proper place for this thread and further 
discussion.

Happy hacking.
Krishnakant.
On Tuesday 13 April 2010 10:31 PM, Bill Cox wrote:
> Luke is project lead, though I believe a couple of others may also
> have authority to commit changes.  However, Luke has to date worked to
> form consensus on the opentts-dev mailing list before making
> significant changes.  Progress in the last several weeks has been
> truly outstanding, and I for one am happy that opentts is in good
> hands, and that I probably wont have to go digging into this code
> anymore :-)
>
> Bill
>
> On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 1:09 AM, A<avalon at friendofpooh.com>  wrote:
>    
>> Who's project lead or is there a committee? Sorry but it is not
>> obvious from the announcement who's having the final word on
>> decisions.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 4:07 AM, Luke Yelavich<themuso at ubuntu.com>  wrote:
>>      
>>> I am writing to announce a fork of speech-dispatcher, the open source 
>>> text-to-speech framework, initially developed by Brailcom as a part of the 
>>> freebsoft project, http://www.freebsoft.org. The fork also includes other 
>>> important components of the speech stack, including speechd-up, the 
>>> connector between speakup and speech-dispatcher, and the speech-dispatcher 
>>> java bindings. As you may have guessed from the subject, the fork is now 
>>> called OpenTTS. OpenTTS refers to both the speech server, API and 
>>> documentation, as well as the umbrella project as a whole. The other 
>>> projects mentioned above have also been given new names, speechd-up is now 
>>> known as OSpeakup, and speechd-java is now known as OpenTTS-java.
>>>
>>> Why Fork Speech Dispatcher and Related Projects?
>>>
>>> One of the fundamental freedoms granted by the GPL is the freedom to 
>>> publish one's modifications to the source code of a software product.  
>>> Sometimes, such publication takes the form of a fork, in which the modified 
>>> product is developed separately from the original. In this case, we've 
>>> chosen to make forks of software initially produced by the Brailcom group. 
>>> We'll describe our reasons for doing that below.
>>>
>>> The Brailcom group had a great idea.  They wanted to provide a system or 
>>> user-level service to control synthetic speech.  That was Speech 
>>> Dispatcher. They created libraries to ease the task of communicating with 
>>> that service, so that it would be possible for programmers to speech-enable 
>>> their applications , simply by calling output functions provided by one of 
>>> these libraries.  For several years, Brailcom actively maintained and 
>>> promoted Speech Dispatcher and the software associated with it. They 
>>> innovated, and the community at large was slow to adopt.
>>>
>>> Over time, projects within the accessibility community began to embrace 
>>> Speech Dispatcher.  It is now the preferred speech synthesis backend of the 
>>> Orca screenreader. The Speakup screenreader can control many software-based 
>>> text-to-speech engines with the help of Speech Dispatcher and a small 
>>> connector program. One advantage of that strategy is that Orca and Speakup 
>>> can cooperatively use the same text-to-speech engine.  The key point is 
>>> that many projects have adopted Speech Dispatcher, to a greater or lesser 
>>> extent.
>>>
>>> As time passed, the tables turned. The most recent official release of 
>>> Speech Dispatcher was made in the summer of 2008.  The developers began 
>>> taking less and less of a role in the project.  The source code moved from 
>>> a CVS repository to git in 2009.  During much of that year, active 
>>> development took place in a repository hosted by Luke Yelavich.  Mr. 
>>> Yelavich even produced several unofficial "release candidate" versions of 
>>> Speech Dispatcher. Unfortunately, the official release process is stalled. 
>>> In an effort to clarify the current status of the software, members of the 
>>> community contacted Brailcom. Replies to these requests for information 
>>> were somewhat non-committal.  In effect, Brailcom stated that they were 
>>> interested in developing Speech Dispatcher, but they had no current plans.
>>>
>>> That, in short, is why we forked.  Members of the open-source accessibility 
>>> community need and want an actively-developed speech framework. The OpenTTS 
>>> project hopes to fulfill that need by carrying forward the vision set forth 
>>> by Brailcom.
>>>
>>> The OpenTTS.org website is now live, although there is not much there at 
>>> the moment. The site will be expanded in the near future to add areas for 
>>> documentation, and feature specification tracking, to help developers 
>>> better outline and indicate what the next release of OpenTTS will contain. 
>>> You will also find a link to our mailing lists, where you can discuss 
>>> OpenTTS development.
>>>
>>> We welcome all contributors from the community who wish to help us further 
>>> develope the OpenTTS framework, and encourage any interested contributors 
>>> to join the opentts-dev mailing list. To get more information on this list, 
>>> or other lists relating to OpenTTS, please go to http://lists.opentts.org. 
>>> We also especially welcome any Brailcom staff who wish to contribute to the 
>>> project.
>>>
>>> I plan to announce the focus for OpenTTS development over the next 6 months 
>>> very soon, and will do so on the opentts-dev mailing list (see above), and 
>>> the website, so please stay tuned for more information. Should you have any 
>>> questions, please feel free to subscribe to the opentts-users mailing list, 
>>> and ask away. Commonly asked questions will be put up on the website for 
>>> all to read.
>>>
>>> Finally, I'd like to thank Chris Brannon and William Hubbs for their hard 
>>> work so far in helping get things off the ground, particularly with code 
>>> cleanup and re-organisation. I would also like to thank all of those in the 
>>> community who supported going ahead with the fork, you know who you are.
>>>
>>> I sincerely hope that from here on out, we can create a text to speech 
>>> framework that can rival those available for proprietary operating systems, 
>>> as well as creating a framework that all application developers feel 
>>> comfortable working with. Text to speech is important for more than just 
>>> those with a disability, it is very useful for many other people for many 
>>> different tasks. Lets give them a reason to want to use it.
>>>
>>>
>>> Luke Yelavich
>>> OpenTTS project lead.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Speechd mailing list
>>> Speechd at lists.freebsoft.org
>>> http://lists.freebsoft.org/mailman/listinfo/speechd
>>>
>>>        
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>>      
> _______________________________________________
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> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> The manual is at 
> http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
> Netiquette Guidelines are at 
> http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines
> Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
> Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp
>
>