DECtalk ACCESS32 and JAWS, was RE: Please remind me where to din and how to download voices
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Matthew Horspool
Hi Robin, Interestingly, JAWS has (or had) a driver for DECtalk ACCESS32, but I now can't find a version of DEC ACCESS that works with that driver. I'm with you, though – I used DEC ACCESS with JAWS for years and would much prefer it over Eloquence. It hadn't even occurred to me until you said something that, of course, Vispero will have all the old GW licenses and a version of DEC ACCESS that works with Windows 10 thanks to Window-Eyes, so actually it probably wouldn't be very difficult for them to get something going. Please can I encourage you and everyone else who would like DEC ACCESS in JAWS to email suggestions@... and make the case clear? I will also do this. Thanks, Matthew
From: main@jfw.groups.io [mailto:main@jfw.groups.io]
On Behalf Of Van Lant, Robin via Groups.Io
I use Nathan in Vocalizer. There’s just something in the Eloquenc voices that bothers my ears and makes it hard for me to understand them. However, I do find that Vocalizer has some odd pronunciations compared to what I was used to with Dec Access in Window Eyes. I am really surprised at how many edits to the pronunciation dictionary I have had to make to normal words that are said oddly.
Oh, and I like the advice to change the JAWS cursor voice to something else so it’s really obvious when I am using the PC cursor versus the JAWS cursor.
From:
main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io>
On Behalf Of Kramlinger, Keith G., M.D. via Groups.Io
Hi,
I’m setting up a new computer and installing JAWS 2019. It’s been so long since I’ve downloaded voices, I’m not sure how to do this now.
I currently use Tom. I’m confused over which selection to make from among the various formats for finding and downloading Tom.
Can someone please remind me? Also, even though voices are quite subjective, are there favorites any one cares to mention for best possible voice experience? Thanks in advance. Keith
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David Ingram
Hi, how are you? If you're trying to download voices you should be able to do that within jaws buy going to where the help menue is and going throu to see where the voices are? I hope that this helps someone.
-----Original Message----- |
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Matthew Horspool
Hi David, Thanks for the tip. However, DECtalk ACCESS32 is not available on that downloads page. It is in fact one of the oldest software speech synthesizers around and is even harder to get hold of than Eloquence nowadays. It is only because GW still maintained it in Window-Eyes that I think we have any hope at all of getting it reinstated in JAWS. Matthew
From: main@jfw.groups.io [mailto:main@jfw.groups.io]
On Behalf Of David Ingram
Hi, how are you? If you're trying to download voices you should be able to do that within jaws buy going to where the help menue is and going throu to see where the voices are? I hope that this helps someone.
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Josh Kennedy
it works with NVDA. There is an addon that gives you decTalk 4.1 through 4.6. and I did offer freedom scientific the dlls so they could get it working with jaws once again as a vintage voice. and I bet Nuance also has source code for keynote gold multimedia so they may be able to bring that back as well.
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K0LNY
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I always thought Keynote Gold sounded like someone
with a sock in their mouth.
I used it on some notetaker a long time back I
believe.
----- Original Message -----
From: Josh
Kennedy
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2022 9:58 PM
Subject: Re: DECtalk ACCESS32 and JAWS, was RE: Please remind me
where to din and how to download voices |
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Pat Byrne
I had Keynote Gold at a job site - it couldn't pronounce the letter
"K",, so it said press any pee to continue, and so on. I
lived with it!
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Pat Byrne At 10:00 PM 6/16/2022, you wrote:  |
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Josh Kennedy
you probably used keynote gold with a brailleNote classic, or a keynote companion. I used it on a grid laptop customized by pulseData back in 1992, with Keysoft version 1.33F for ms-dos 5.0 and the pulseData masterTouch screen reader the the MasterTouch tablet, which I never used but I had it. I wish I would have played with that thing. It was a tablet with 25 raised lines going across it and a few buttons. It plugged into the Keynote gold SA speech box using a short phone line type cord. And you could move your finger across the raised lines on the tablet and Keynote gold would read the corresponding screen lines to you. not sure what the other buttons did. Dos had 25 lines of 80 characters each. Dos stands for disk operating system and was a command-line OS. you type commands to make it do stuff like erase files or load programs and only one program would run at a time unless you had a special multiTasking shell. I did use smooth talker for dos with the sound blaster card. its motto was: sound blaster, blast away the sound!! Smooth talker with the shareware Tiny Talk screen reader by Erik Bohlman and it was rather laggy and slow. Anyway the dos operating system it also sometimes used extended ascii characters for drawing boxes and dialogs and stuff which some screen readers such as vocal-eyes and ASAP could tell you what those characters were. And if your screen reader did not support keynote gold directly. \You would edit your config.sys file and put in this line:
device= c:\golddev.sys After you had the free golddev.sys file, of course. Then making sure your keynote gold SA was connected to the grid laptop, you turn it off, and back on. Then Keynote Gold SA serial speech synthesizer with its default serial settings of 38300 baud I think, 8 data bits, no parody, 1 stop bits, and software handshaking or xon-xoff handshaking would say: Gold Card device driver version 1.44 ready. Serial number demo. And then you tell your screen reader like ASAP by MicroTalk to use an Accent synthesizer on com1. Then Keynote gold would work. Or you could use outSpoken for windows3.1. And it worked that way also. Windows-master screen reader by blazie engineering also worked. I wish I could have used Keysoft with decTalk just to see what it was like. But it worked good with my Keynote Gold SA speech synthesizer. And on the back of the keynote gold box was brailled its serial number and the company name, PulseData. |
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Curtis Delzer
I cannot get the add-on to work with the newer versions of NVDA. Heavens knows I grew up with computers and DecTalk.
On 6/16/2022 8:00 PM, Glenn / Lenny
wrote:
-- Curtis Delzer H.S. K6VFO Rialto, CA curtis@... |
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Josh Kennedy
You have to edit the manifest.ini file found in:
C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\nvda\addons\DECtalk py3 bundle 2022 edit manifest.ini using notepad. And edit the last tested NVDA version line so that it reads like this. lastTestedNVDAVersion = 2022.1
you can also experiment, you could change it to maybe 2052.2 so that way decTalk may work for a few decades to come. and then save the file with control s, s as in sam. then try using decTalk again. But I wish these decTalks would work with jaws2022 and above. |
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