Notices

Yeah, that it is, but it's replacable at compile time . Someday, when I have too much time, I'm gonna try porting it with some nicer voice. ETA: 2027.

BTW, I just ported some gps-related tools, which let you run a whacked-up version of cyborg.py, which uses flite to give you the direction (in o'clock format, relative to your current heading), distance, and ETA to a given destination. You have to have MM or something running to keep the GPS up (at least with an N800 and BT GPS), but I find it useful (as well as cool); if you're interested, it's over here.

And if you have extra too much free spare time, Benson, could you try porting it with some Spanish voice too?

Thank you in advance.

the voice has nothing to do with the language. i think it would require that the directions/voice prompts would have to be passed through a translation engine, and then synthesized using flite.

not sure, but i think gnuite was doing something with mapper so that one could pick his/her locale and have the gpx downloaded in the native language. not sure if that was implemented or even on the road map, but i heard whispers to that effect some time ago.

if it was the case that one could download routes, with directions in their native language, the flite should be indifferent, and be able to give the directions in the language specified. i think the pronunciation may be a bit off, and that would make for some fun listening.

I think you need a different voice as well, because the phonics is part of the voice.

If you fed it Spanish, it would sound like me reading Spanish. The pronunciation gets highly amusing at times, because the letters are the same, but the rules are funny. Moreover, because of that distinction, some sounds needed for Spanish just won't be there. No point compiling them in, if this set of rules never calls them.

I read just enough about flite voices to learn that it wasn't just a bunch of audio files I could modify or replace, but involved

1. recompiling
   and
2. porting the logic (from Scheme, IIRC) to C

Then I got discouraged and filed it for "too much time" time. So I'm no expert, but I know it has logic in there, and I'm pretty sure it's language specific.

I don't think it'd be more work porting a Spanish voice than an English, so if I did jump in, I'd probably do several voices, including a hot senorita (provided I can find such a voice for festival).

great idea, books on tape meets pr0n. if you could choreograph an image slideshow or video to that... holy wow. i could see that taking off as a product.

Thanks, Benson.

I will start looking for a good Spanish voice.

Edit: Found two mexican voices (they will be good as neutral Spanish)

Male Voice
Female Voice

Apparently, you need a synthesizer scheme code before using them. Here it is.

Found here.

Have you ever listened Spanish language street names pronounced with the original English flite voice? It's impossible to understand where you are.

By the way, in RoadMap you already can change the words flite uses to announce. For instance, you can have 'Aproximándose a' instead of 'Approaching', but the standard pronunciation makes it useless.

The voice is bad, but it works fine. When I used it with Maemo Mapper, I just had to remember that when it was making noise, I was supposed to turn or something. I couldn't distinguish many actual words. But, as a squawk box, it worked well.

flite doesn't work on my maemo mapper why?

That's awesome, but the ETA 2027 still applies; it's just gonna take some time porting the scheme to C and setting up to build... I don't expect it to be all that hard, but time is time, and I don't have enough. Maybe you (or someone else with a vested interest) should work on it meanwhile.