Hi mateusz,
First profound apologies for messing up your name.
You know, I bet Joseph the person behind the talking freedos did not
even consider that one. I have a copy, and if it is indeed open source
that might be worth exploring.
Granted I would have to read documentation again, but yes absolutely
both screen reader and speech synthesis is a Tod more complicated.
You should end up with understandable spoken words, but that depends on
where you are writing the output to, and what is managing that output.
Felix's claim that speech hardware is a challenge to come by is not
completely true, one must know where to look.
Further one can use software sources to create speech, again depending
on the structure involved, with mixed results.
karen
On Sun, 15 Mar 2020, Mateusz Viste wrote:
> On 15/03/2020 21:34, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> > Including on board dos screen readers ASAP and Tinytalk.
>
> Interesting. After a short search I found a TSR screen reader called
> "PROVOX", which appears to be open-source. Is this something worth
> looking at? So far I was able to load it under FreeDOS within a
> VirtualBox instance, and I am able to receive "something" on the host
> (through a virtual COM port). Unfortunately I am unable to figure out
> the meaning of what PROVOX outputs - I was expecting some human phrases
> meant to be read aloud, but apparently the protocol used by synthesizer
> is more complex than that.
>
> Mateusz
>
>
>
>
> > On Sun, 15 Mar 2020, Felix G. wrote:
> >
> > > Dear FreeDOS community,
> > > it's great to be here, and amazing that a project such as FreeDOS
> > > exists, preserving access to some of the greatest software ever
> > > written.
> > > My name is Felix Grützmacher. I am 39, I work as a software
> > > developer
> > > in assistive technology, and I was born blind. In my spare time I
> > play
> > > such video games as are accessible to me, my blindness restricting
> > > this set of games to mostly text adventure games from the 80s and
> > > early 90s, a fact which I don't find restricting at all because
> > > some
> > > of the best games are contained in this descriptor.
> > > ... Which brings me to my question.
> > > A substantial subset of these games don't run natively on Windows,
> > > which is the platform I mostly use. I can run some of them with
> > > the
> > > help of Dosbox, but this approach requires that a native DOS
> > > screen
> > > reader be running in the Dosbox environment, sending its output to
> > > a
> > > serial port which I redirect and pass to a speech synthesizer
> > emulator
> > > running on the host computer. It sounds just as messy as it is,
> > and it
> > > is slow as ... well, let's just say it does not exactly qualify as
> > > a
> > > walk in the park as it relies on an impressive chain of
> > components. As
> > > soon as one of those stops working, I am literally left in the
> > > dark.
> > > Without speech output, that is. To make matters worse, I have
> > > grown
> > > rather disenchanted with Dosbox recently as it seems to have
> > emulation
> > > problems which surface in some of the games I'd like to run, in
> > > some
> > > instances leading to garbage output. It's not really DOS, after
> > > all,
> > > but a thin layer atop Windows to run DOS games.
> > > FreeDOS to the rescue, or so I thought, but I have yet to find any
> > > documentation on how to create a blind-friendly environment with
> > > it.
> > > A native install seems to be out of the question: neither does my
> > > computer hav a serial port, nor am I in possession of a hardware
> > > speech synthesizer. The former might be acquired, but the latter,
> > > alas, is no longer on sale.
> > > So I guess what I need is a virtual machine running FreeDOS, but I
> > > have no idea how to install FreeDOS on a virtual machine without
> > > sighted assistance, and even if this could be accomplished, how
> > > would
> > > I then install a screen reader into that virtual machine, or for
> > > that
> > > matter, how would I get any files downloaded from the net into
> > > that
> > > virtual environment?
> > > If you have come this far in reading my ramblings, I hope you will
> > > be
> > > so kind as to offer some advice.
> > > And if the last few paragraphs have made no sense whatsoever,
> > consider
> > > my question to be as follows: What is the established route by
> > which a
> > > blind user may install and use FreeDOS?
> > > All the best,
> > > Felix
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > Freedos-user mailing list
> > > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> >
>
>
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