On 4/26/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
And I should add, why do we need a spoken Wikipedia? Wouldn't it be better to adapt a TTS engine to get articles from Wikipedia, and read them? Remember, TTS engines can be made for any language, and it's becoming increasingly easy to make them even if you're not an expert.
Mark, not sure if you're wondering about the whole idea of audible aritcles, or just the human-centered approach to it.
If you find a TTS system that is acceptably good (Festival, MBROLA, et al) then feel free to try it and post some samples at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia]]. But so far the TTS results I've heard have been quite unsatisfactory, and the "ear fatigue" experienced when listening to a herky jerky TTS system doesn't bode well for long articles. Wikipedia might be a great testbed for a TTS system. I'd like to see how it does on mixed language articles like [[Dim sum]].
-User:Fuzheado