iceshrimp.net - Link to source
Shower thought: I wonder if any #blind kids today are growing up on espeak the way we grew up on eloquence? Is there a future where espeak is out of date and ancient, and people are clinging to it with the desperation people today cling to eloquence and dectalk? Honestly y'all, espeak read isn't that bad. I just wish espeak was usable on IOS; the available app is old and littered with bugs. #a11y#screenreader#accessibility
#a11y #Accessibility #blind #screenreader
in reply to Matt Campbell

iceshrimp.net - Link to source

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

@matt Yes, "anyone who cares to" is the key phrase here. From what I understand, espeak's code is terrible because it was written for Risc OS. And the overlap between blind people who know C++ and blind people who want a speech synthesiser kept up to date is going to be vanishingly small. The Espeak IOS app is a perfect example. It hasn't been updated in three years, even though everyone who tries it is aware of the bugs, and many people want it fixed, and it's not really useful in its current state because of the constant crackling. Just because something is open source doesn't mean it will be maintained.
@Matt Campbell
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

iceshrimp.net - Link to source

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

@matt Heck, even the Espeak on the Google play store is only updated once every year or two. Windows and Linux are really the only platforms that are maintained. If whoever's in charge of Linux builds stepped away, I could see the updates stopping there, too. Windows is only safe because NVDA depends on it for now. But even they switched to One Core by default. So I can absolutely imagine a day where espeak is just as hard to run as eloquence or dectalk. It would be more legal, sure. But that doesn't always mean easier.
@Matt Campbell
in reply to Alex Hall

mastodon - Link to source

Pitermach

I would honestly even say Linux and maybe also Android is getting the most love and the library. From a Windows/NVDA context, yes, it's getting updated. You want a SAPI version that'll work with other screen readers or apps though? The only version that still works is an ancient version pre EspeakNG which is also 32-bit only. EspeakNG never had a working SAPI version that I'm aware of - there were some builds that would show up in SAPi settings but not actually function.
in reply to JamminJerry

mastodon - Link to source

x0

I can't use it, it's painful for me because of the recorded consonants. Their klatt modes still use the recorded consonants, which can be rather sharp depending on your listening device, and I'm from the US. I'd like my computer to speak in an accent of the country I'm from, but it's American English is still pretty sucky. There are at least custom voices to adjust the relative formants and all that to craft the perfect klatt voice, and you can turn down the recorded consonants, but not off. I don't like some of those new ones like edward2, they sound like they're ringing and I can hear the upper formants as distinct pitches.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Mikołaj Hołysz

mastodon - Link to source

David Goldfield

Agreed. eSpeak is not only available in many languages but it's open source, meaning that it's currently free of cost to a variety of users and this will likely ensure continued development, at least from a core group of developers. However, I think that many people in some countries will consider it to be not as useful as the commercial, more human-sounding TTS engines.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

glitchsoc - Link to source

Casey Reeves

Michel voice variant for me. Or Michael, no idea why they both exist since they are identical, or appear to be.

That said, what about the bugs in the espeak app on ios? It works pretty decently for me here at least, the crackling issue only happens after past a certain speech rate and I've never had cause to go that far with it.

I know there is an issue on gh about updating it and the dev said it would be done, no idea where that went off to if anywhere.

in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

glitchsoc - Link to source

Casey Reeves

Oof yeah in that case, I get you, definitely.

Well, in a way I'm still glad we have it on ios, because on android it's, excuse my french, shit. Or was, last time I had android in hand. No way to set the variant, the app wasn't even belonging to espeak on the play store, it was full of ads, and android 10 broke it so bad it became unusable.

Meanwhile ios side, espeak survived 16, 17, 18 and 26 and has no ads, you get access to all variants with a pleasant enough interface.

Kind of crazy because eloquence for me used to be my go to. But seeing as ibm tts is shit on linux, that I use espeakup anyway, well. I tolerate eloquence mostly as a fallback, these days, whereas before I absolutely wanted nothing to do with espeak, until I found out about Michel variant.

in reply to Casey Reeves

iceshrimp.net - Link to source

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

@xogium Okay so, for gits and shiggles I looked closer into the state of espeak on Android. The app in the play store is broken. However, you can download an APK from the official github, and that works fine; it's up to date, modern, and has no ads. Why isn't the official APK from the espeak-ng github on the play store? Who knows! It's open source; you'll take your inexplicably broken things and like it that way, darn it! Oh, maybe it's not on the Play Store because it's on F-Droid? Hahaha no! Get your APK from github just like you do for Windows apps; no package management, for you, buddy.
@Casey Reeves
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