Speak

Speak
Status:	Under development
Version:	3
Base:	No
Source:
l10n:	missing
Contributors
Josh Minor

Speak

Speak is a talking face for the XO laptop. Anything you type will be spoken aloud using the XO's speech synthesizer, espeak. You can adjust the accent, rate and pitch of the voice as well as the shape of the eyes and mouth. This is a great way to experiment with the speech synthesizer, learn to type or just have fun making a funny face for your XO.

Screenshot

Instructions

How to install

Download this .xo file from the Browse activity: Speak-3.xo

If you have an older version, you'll need to delete it before you can download the new version. There are instructions here: Activity_Upgrade

You can also use xo-get to install and/or upgrade Speak (as well as many other activities).

How to play

Type something and press Enter to hear it spoken aloud. Use the toolbars at the top to change the voice's accent, rate and pitch or the shape of the eyes and mouth. After you've adjusted the settings it looks nicer in full-screen mode (Press Alt-Enter to switch).

How to develop

Speak is free software, licensed under the GPL. It is partially based on Arjun Sarwal's code from Measure and of course relies heavily on espeak.

Testing (Yes)

Speak v3 has been tested on build 653 under emulation as well as on a G1G1.

Reviews

An extremely fun activity. The developer did a great job of using the speech capabilities of the app to make it easy for the user to start playing. Great job incorporating the accents for different languages. This is one of the best speech apps I've seen in a while. - Paul Russell

Best Activity I've found for the XO so far! My niece will love it!!! Great Job! - Dwight Harvey

Bugs

There are intermittent performance problems, especially with long sentences. The toolbar sliders need icons or labels so you know what they do.

Feature requests

Set default language to another language than English.

Speak should save your settings to the journal.

You should be able to draw/make new mouth and eye shapes.

Ideally the mouth shape should be driven by espeak's phonemes rather than the audio waveform.

You should be able to make it sing.

Let the text scroll back so you can repeat something without retyping it.

• Well, one solution for this problem is to copy to clipboard the text. I opened a write activity, select one phrase from my favorite list, and from the edit menu, copy. Then, opened the speak activity and drag the text over the input line.

My favorite list: My child name, the numbers. greetings, etc,... Pato Acevedo.

What happens when speak is shared with the neighborhood? Is there some way to integrate it so that users can make each other's laptops talk across distances? This would enable speak to be used as a simple chat for blind users. -Lesley