bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) (03/09/90)
I think it's ludicrous that Macintalk will no longer be a part of the
Macintosh, come System 7.
My very first computer -- a TI 99/4A -- had a small box plugged into
the side of it, which served to give it much the same speech
capability as a Speak 'n' Spell toy: very clear and understandable,
even supporting inflection of words.
My next computer, a Commodore 64 (well, a 128 that had delusions of
being a 64), ran a program called "SAM" (the Software-Activated Mouth)
that not only spoke clearly (with a slight Irish accent, I think) and
with inflection, but could also sing. One of the demo programs it
came with had it crooning "Oh Say Can You See". You could also use it
very easily to add speech to programs you wrote, and I seem to
remember a hack someone did that got it to add speech to the text
adventure Zork.
A few years ago, I moved up to the Macintosh. Shortly after I got it,
I came upon Macintalk, and had a lot of fun with such programs such as
"Welcome2", the "Talking Moose", and (later) "HyperMacinTalk". As a
matter of fact, I designed a HyperCard program for NASA a while back
to show off their new space station, and the use of MacinTalk was a
serious consideration for a while. (It was finally ruled out because
the `computery sound' might scare off some technophobic users.
All this time I've been waiting eagerly for an upgrade of MacinTalk...
... only now to find that there won't BE any upgrade!
In my humble opinion, this is a step backwards. Why is it that my TI
and my Commodore both spoke English well, while speech is a
soon-to-be-gone and badly-supported option on the Mac, and nonexistent
on the NeXT?
(Come to think of it, the TI and the Commodore had 16 colors, too,
while I'm limited to four greys on the NeXT and just black 'n' white
on the Mac... but that's another story entirely.)
So, my questions:
Is there any way that Apple can be persuaded to revamp MacinTalk for
System 7?
Are there any developers out there who would be willing to achieve
instant fame and fortune by either revamping MacinTalk, or by creating
a new (compatible?) speech synthesizer program for the Mac?
Is there any good source code out there to start with so that I could
try to hack something up myself?
Eagerly awaiting a reply...
<< Brian >>
--
| Brian S. Kendig \ Macintosh | Engineering, | bskendig |
| Computer Engineering |\ Thought | USS Enterprise | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU
| Princeton University |_\ Police | -= NCC-1701-D =- | @PUCC.BITNET |
... s l o w l y, s l o w l y, w i t h t h e v e l o c i t y o f l o v e.chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/09/90)
bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes: >So, my questions: >Is there any way that Apple can be persuaded to revamp MacinTalk for >System 7? No. The reason is simple: Macintalk (which in my Humble Opinion is a primitive hack at best, anyway) was developed for Apple by a third party. For various reasons, no source code to Macintalk is in existence. The only thing Apple HAS is the binary that is shipped. You cannot maintain, enhance or change something you can't touch, and without source, you can't touch it. Do not, however, consider lack of support for Macintalk to be a general lack of interest in this area. Just a current lack of shippable tools. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil -- Shelley
kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (03/09/90)
In article <39322@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
-No. The reason is simple: Macintalk (which in my Humble Opinion is a
-primitive hack at best, anyway) was developed for Apple by a third party.
-For various reasons, no source code to Macintalk is in existence. The only
-thing Apple HAS is the binary that is shipped. You cannot maintain, enhance
-or change something you can't touch, and without source, you can't touch it.
So what's MacNosy? Chopped liver? Of course you have enough source. Unless
Apple doesn't want to (or can't because of contract reasons) look at it.
Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)gbrown@tybalt.caltech.edu (Glenn C. Brown) (03/09/90)
bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes: >I think it's ludicrous that Macintalk will no longer be a part of the >Macintosh, come System 7. [...] >Is there any way that Apple can be persuaded to revamp MacinTalk for >System 7? The really depressing thing to me is that I hear (from a very reliable source) that someGuy@Apple ran some sort of neural net on a phonetic dictionary (using apple's CRAY) and manged to distill the pronunciation rules of English (even the irregular stuff) down to a file of < 100k. I here that their favorite demo of the program is that it could pronounce "jaberwoky" (sp?) correctly, not to mention just about every NORMAL English word you can think of... Now, if only the can make Mac sound a little less robotic and a bit more like Marylin Monroe. =-) You know, I'm pretty sure that Macintalk didn't ship w/ 6.0: I had a heck of a time finding a version of " that didn't crash my //! Maybe they're not shipping Macintalk because they're saving it for release with some Mac //s (for sound as good as a Apple //gs, but stereo).=-) Really, a revamp of the sound capabilites of the Mac would explain why Apple hasn't wasted time on a version of Macintalk that would have to be rewritten soon for a new machine w/ diff. sound capabilities. --Glenn
ke2y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (03/09/90)
In article <1990Mar9.024332.495@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) writes: > > So what's MacNosy? Chopped liver? Of course you have enough source. Unless > Apple doesn't want to (or can't because of contract reasons) look at it. > > Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu) Excuse me, but if I understand you correctly, you are implying that MacinTalk should be disassembled/reverse-compiled by someone (Apple?) so that a bug-fix can be made to allow it to work with System 7. Generally, most licensing agreements specifically prohibit disassembly and reverse-compilation of the code (and generally do not allow ANY modifications to the code at all). As an end-user of this product, typically you are also bound to this agreement that Apple apparently signed. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong in any of these assumptions. Considering the legal battles that everyone seems to be getting into these days, I know I'm more than a bit hesitant in playing around with this. --John =============================================================================== | John T. Chapman | | | | Witty message under repair... | | ke2y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu | | | ke2y@crnlvax5.bitnet | | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Disclaimer: These opinions are mine. You can't have them! | ===============================================================================
chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/09/90)
gbrown@tybalt.caltech.edu (Glenn C. Brown) writes: > You know, I'm pretty sure that Macintalk didn't ship w/ 6.0: I had >a heck of a time finding a version of " that didn't crash my //! I don't believe Macintalk ever shipped with system software. It's been available seperately. To work on a Mac II, you need to run version 1.41, which was bit-hacked (literally) somehow so that it would work on 680x0 machines. The original Macintalk was 68000 dependent, among other dependencies. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil -- Shelley
gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (03/10/90)
Macintalk. Cool hack. Does the talk thing. That's gooood. No source code. No upward compatibility. Mac crashes. Does the bomb thing. That's baaaad. Baaaad. Macintalk good. Crash bad. Solution? Write replacement. Would be prudent at this juncture. Easy to do? Far from it. Need the vision thing. Robert ============================================================================ = gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu * generic disclaimer: * "It's more fun to = = * all my opinions are * compute" = = * mine * -Kraftwerk = ============================================================================
minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow) (03/10/90)
In article <1990Mar9.144541.29446@spectre.ccsf.caltech.edu> gbrown@tybalt.caltech.edu (Glenn C. Brown) writes: > The really depressing thing to me is that I hear (from a very reliable >source) that someGuy@Apple ran some sort of neural net on a phonetic >dictionary (using apple's CRAY) and manged to distill the pronunciation rules >of English (even the irregular stuff) down to a file of < 100k. So? DECtalk (Dec's speech synthesizer product) has very good pronunciation rules using a 64 kbyte "intelligent" dictionary and a fairly small program to run it. All of DECtalk runs on a 68000, with a separate signal processor (TI 320) to do the speech generation. From having listened to it, I suspect that Macintalk contains a simple text-to-speech program (perhaps using the public-domain NRL rules that can be implemented in one page of Basic) and a series of waveform tables that are fed into the sound generator (the text to speech program builds a stream of waveforms). If the company that wrote Macintalk didn't license/sell the waveforms to Apple, they might not be able to change them to suit later hardware. I suspect that a crude speech synthesizer could be brought up on one of the Mac-II series without too much difficulty, however the quality of DECtalk demands much more compute resources than you can get on a Mac (to do the actual signal generation). I'm suprised that NeXt hasn't done one: perhaps decent quality is harder than you software folk realize. Martin Minow (ex DecTalk developer) minow@thundr.enet.dec.com The above does not represent the position of Digital Equipment Corporation
pmercer@apple.com (Paul Mercer) (03/10/90)
Who said MacinTalk doesn't work with System 7? I tried it a couple of days ago and it worked fine. It is true that MacinTalk is unsupported. And I am not making any promises (I don't work in the Sound Group) but please, don't believe everything you hear or read. Paul Mercer Finder Team & original MacinTalk bit twiddler
kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (03/10/90)
In article <3593.25f78a85@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> ke2y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: >In article <1990Mar9.024332.495@Neon.Stanford.EDU>, kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) writes: -> So what's MacNosy? Chopped liver? Of course you have enough source. Unless -> Apple doesn't want to (or can't because of contract reasons) look at it. ************************************ [MTK] -> Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu) > Excuse me, but if I understand you correctly, you are implying that MacinTalk >should be disassembled/reverse-compiled by someone (Apple?) so that a bug-fix >can be made to allow it to work with System 7. > Generally, most licensing agreements specifically prohibit disassembly and >reverse-compilation of the code (and generally do not allow ANY modifications >to the code at all). As an end-user of this product, typically you are also >bound to this agreement that Apple apparently signed. > Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong in any of these assumptions. Sure. Please read my original posting. What you say is possibly true. I am not so sure *I* am bound by Apple's original agreement with whoever wrote MacinTalk. In any event, as you can see, I was only responding to Chuq's assertion that he didn't have source code that would enable him to modify MacinTalk. Besides, Apple has already admitted to making binary patches to the code. I guess it is possible to do that without disassembling it -- but I think it would be rather more difficult to do. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)
jmunkki@kampi.hut.fi (Juri Munkki) (03/10/90)
bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes: >Is there any way that Apple can be persuaded to revamp MacinTalk for >System 7? I don't think that Macintalk is worth it anymore. I think it belongs in the same category as the original MacWrite. (Weird hacks that are fully understood only by the people who wrote them.) >Are there any developers out there who would be willing to achieve >instant fame and fortune by either revamping MacinTalk, or by creating >a new (compatible?) speech synthesizer program for the Mac? A Finnish team just demonstrated their Finnish Macinpuhe (Macintalk in Finnish) system. I don't know if it's Macintalk-compatible, but it does a lot more than Macintalk used to do. It comes with a cdev that speaks most things that you do with a Mac (like menu selections, opening files, changing windows, clipboard contents, buttons, ...) The driver comes with three predefined voices and they say it takes about a week to create a new voice. One of the voices is even quite understandable. Maybe these people could be persuaded (with money & fame) to write something that can speak English. Their software is microphoneme (sp?) based, so they would just need the rules to convert text to phonemes. The current conversion is probably too simple for English, since Finnish is written almost phonetically. Please note that they have written the system from the ground up. They didn't use anything from the old Macintalk. _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._ | Juri Munkki jmunkki@hut.fi jmunkki@fingate.bitnet I Want Ne | | Helsinki University of Technology Computing Centre My Own XT | ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
J.COOK@ENS.Prime.COM (03/11/90)
Re: The demise of MacInTalk with System 7.0 Since the thing is so darned popular, why doesn't Apple just contract the original vendor for an update? I can't believe the fee to be that steep. That failing, why don't they BUY the source? Or, if the original product was just a fast hack for the original Mac launch in 1984, then why not hack a new one - the stuff to do it should be a lot more public (read: published) now. Jim Cook (J.COOK@ENS.PRIME.COM) Prime Computer, 500 Old Conn. Path, Framingham, Mass. "The obvious question for a cheap price. The not-so-obvious for a little more. These questions are mine, not Prime's."
usenet@nlm-mcs.arpa (usenet news poster) (03/18/90)
In article <14377@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes: >I think it's ludicrous that Macintalk will no longer be a part of the >Macintosh, come System 7. > Apple's pronouncement of death to Macintalk was too extravagant, considering they've maintained for a very long time that the package is not supported. On the other hand, Apple may have been simply doing its best to avoid further criticism... but I have an inkling that Apple has far more ambitious plans for our future than Macintalk. Can you say "digital signal processing," "speech synthesis," and "Look out, nExt"? --Warren
omh@cs.brown.edu (Owen M. Hartnett) (03/18/90)
In article <11705@nlm-mcs.arpa> gish@host.NLM.NIH.GOV (Warren Gish) writes: >In article <14377@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) writes: >>I think it's ludicrous that Macintalk will no longer be a part of the >>Macintosh, come System 7. >> > >Apple's pronouncement of death to Macintalk was too extravagant, >considering they've maintained for a very long time that the package is not >supported. On the other hand, Apple may have been simply doing its best >to avoid further criticism... but I have an inkling that Apple has far more >ambitious plans for our future than Macintalk. > >Can you say "digital signal processing," "speech synthesis," and >"Look out, nExt"? If they had it, why not announce it??? Look, System 7.0 was announced while it was still a gleam in some developer's eye, but there's been no announcement other than some commitment to thinking about it. Also, the strategic importance of System 7 far outweighs any speech technology in business minded thinkers. I can't imagine that the people over at NeXT are quaking in their boots thinking "Oh, no! What if they release a new Macintalk?" Owen Hartnett omh@cs.brown.edu.CSNET Brown University Computer Science omh@cs.brown.edu uunet!brunix!omh "Don't wait up for me tonight because I won't be home for a month."
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (03/21/90)
In article <11705@nlm-mcs.arpa> gish@host.NLM.NIH.GOV (Warren Gish) writes: >Can you say "digital signal processing," "speech synthesis," and >"Look out, nExt"? Yes. But I can also say, "expansion slot," "add-on cost," "only a few macs will have it," and "ho-hum, more pricey Apple peripherals." I guess I'm a talented guy :-). Steve -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu UUCP: {convex,uunet}!uiucuxc!dorner