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I have tried Festival, espeak, and MBROLA, but the voices are mediocre at best, and no where near as realistic as current commercial systems. eg this demo: http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html
What is the most realistic free TTS voice you have tried?
Lets start on what you want to use text to speech for? I use text to speech for WBT's. I use Adobe Captivate to creat e-Learning classes. I use the voices downloaded from Adobes website. I believe they come from neo speech. http://www.neospeech.com. They were free to me as I have Captivate already. From the website, they don't apprear to be free.
I have two options:
1.) Android's PicoTTS outperforms Festival, FreeTTS, and eSpeak by a long shot. Don't have an Android device? You can hear a short clip in this video to decide if you agree.
If you like PicoTTS well enough, Android has a synthesizeToFile() method that can save the audio stream to WAV. I'm not aware of any apps that use this feature, but you want to build a web service, so you'd probably have to hack in the Android java source code anyway.
2.) The next option is to use Google Translate, e.g. http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=hello+world.
This works great for strings less than 100 characters. Longer strings would have to be sent in chunks, but there is an app on The Code Project (with source) that already does this pretty well.
Have you tried Loquendo?
Update: I just noticed the 'free' requirement... Fulfilling both realistic and free is a bit difficult, but if you consider voices coming with the OS as free, then Windows Vista and Windows 7 have very impressive voices (unlike XP's).
I have been searching all around and one that I have found that is FREE and has some alright voices is yakitome.com1. This fit perfectly for what I needed(convert text to a .wav file with a better voice than the Microsoft sam crap using a free program ). You can choose among some voices(the best was AT&T's "natural voices") and create a file. The best part is that you can save it as a mp3 or a wav file. Just follow the directions under the FAQ's. There is also a survey and they talk about adding some awesome voices for free.(they would purchase them) Anyways just wanted to share some info because this is the best I've found all week and I've downloaded about 8 programs so far.
YAKiToMe! http://www.yakitome.com is free and has really good voices and adding new ones in multiple languages. I use the site to listen to pdf files and RSS feeds. They can also read email, .txt, html, etc. There's no software to download. It's a cloud-based implementation. They have a well-documented API. Audio books made with YAKiToMe! can be downloaded or shared online. It's a quality service and they never spam me. Did I mention it's free and you can input large texts?
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I'm planning on developing a piece of software that reads & manipulates data in a .dwg file. Instead of writing my own library that handles the 'reading' of the data file, I've decided to use either RealDWG or Teigha, however I'm struggling to understand exactly how they work.
I wish to trial the libraries before committing to paying the license. I've noticed that RealDWG is a subset of ObjectARX (more specifically ObjectDBX), of which I can obtain a trial license. So, if I download ObjetARX, can I use the ObjectDBX subset to develop my application prototype? What are the limitations (if any) of doing this?
My other option was to use Teigha, would this be slower than using RealDWG in the long run? What are the pros/cons of using either RealDWG or Teigha?
Writing your own dwg parser is not practicable, it is a mammoth task and an encrypted format. Forget that "option".
Teigha has a trial, RealDwg does not. They both can cost similar or wildly amounts, depending on how many copies you sell of your app. There are links and more info on the Tag wiki to do your own research there.
ObjectARX requires a full version of AutoCAD to run, AutoCAD hosts the ARX / DBX add-ins. They cannot be made to run without AutoCAD. That's what RealDwg (or AutoCAD OEM) is for.
Teigha works, it runs BricsCAD and pretty-much every other CAD that isn't AutoCAD. Some clients may only want to use the "genuine" app which Autodesk will tell you is theirs. You will find that the majority of AutoCAD users have AutoCAD LT which does not support plugins of any kind. The alternatives that do support plugins are much cheaper than AutoCAD.
Your decision depends on the use-case of your software. How will your users use it? Do they use an app that can host your software as a plugin? All this and more.
AutoCAD dev is a complicated world, so is the market. Do lots of homework.
There is no more Teigha now, it is now called ODA (Open Design Alliance) drawings SDK. There are many ODA based products which can be downloaded and used as trial version. Most of these products offer API kits along with complete documentation. You can try one product here for 30 days with full API and samples to read and write DWG and DXF files.
ODA Libaries are very powerful now and support other file formats of Revit, Navisworks, PDF etc. in addition to standard DWG and DXF formats.
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This is often a bit of a problem for lone developers working on a product or a service. How can they get the word out about their product?
I recently finished a project of mine and I'm struggling a bit to spread word of it.
What do you think is the best way to promote your new product/service?
Although this question isn't strictly programming related, it's a good question for programmers wanting to get their creation out and about.
You should have a short tutorial explaining what your product does and how to use it without having to install anything or fill out a single form. I'm not exactly sure what AnyHub (The OP's website) does with my files, how I would share or manage them or why you are doing it for free.
Look at Web 2.0 sensations and see how they streamline the process from hit to customer. For example Twitter has the What, Why and How buttons right there on the front page and nothing else to distract you from them. It also has motivating testimonials there too, and is themed to represent the idea.
Also, you should be trying to find a point of pain that many people have and try to ease that. Twitter knows it is getting impossible to tell your friends what you are doing via email, sms, blogs, feeds, rss and so on so takes care of it. What do you provide (other than an alternative pricing model?) Tell me on your website.
The internet (obviously).
If you're going at it alone, grassroots via Blogging, Facebook, and Twitter work.
You can also purchase google ad words, and other ad-related venues.
You can consider an open source version of your project, or joining tradegroups/ forums related to whatver problem your product addresses, and start to build a following (but please DONT spam these groups).
Mobile phone applications are really easy to promote nowdays, thanks to Apple's iPhone App Store paradigm. Now all major players (RIM, Nokia, Palm, etc) are opening their own application stores which takes away much of the promotion effort from the developer. As long as your application, game, etc is interesting it will sell by itself. Nevertheless, everything depends on the first week you launch your app and it is up on the list of the newest arrivals.
In the desktop world things are more difficult although Sun recently announced a similar promotion scheme for Java applications. More might follow, but it will depend on Sun's success or failure.
I believe (and actually hope) that centralized "selling services" will be the primary way of buying applications, games, plug-ins, services, etc in the near future. It is far too convenient to pass.
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After I discontinued programming in C++ while entering into web authoring I was spoilt by PHP's high level constructs like hash tables or its dynamic, weak typing. I remembered the angst of C/C++ pointers and the maze of low-level Win32 API handles and message loops and that prevented me from utilizing environments like Code::Blocks for desktop applications. I am also not very fond of bulky, statically-typed C#/.NET environment. Any other ideas?
wxPython
Python has great GUI toolkits.
Delphi. Without question.
http://www.codegear.com/delphi
You'll have to put up with strong typing, though.
C# isn't a bad language and the .Net framework certainly has some interesting features, but WinForms can be sluggish, making it less suitable (at least to me) for desktop GUI applications. I also don't like the hefty runtime requirement.
Tcl/tk is an old-school solution but you can get a gui up and running with surprisingly little code. The runtime can be embedded, so you can distribute a self-contained executable in a single file that contains your code, the runtime, and resource files. The runtime runs on unix/windows/mac so it's easy to generate binaries for whatever platforms you need. However many people find it hard to wrap their heads around tcl...
I have worked a lot with Flex and WPF (c#). Though you don't like C# very much.. I would say that Flex is very much like C#, but without all the strongly-typed code. I have about 13 years of PHP programming under my belt and I would say that moving to flex application development (this includes AIR Desktop applications) was one of the most fluid transitions I have made. Especially if you like working with any kind of javascript.
Anyway, Flex, Flex, Flex... oh yeah, and AIR :)
Please let me know if you need more help with this, or a better breakdown.
I third Pyhon if all you want is fast, easy, pain-free development, or if you want to get back to C++, because some of us just love the pain, try using Boost and Qt you'll be much happier than back in the old days with the Win32 API.
You might use Lua with wxLua or the lightweight IUP libraries. Both being portable.
For quick/small prototype/throw away scripts, I also use AutoHotkey: the language is quite awful for a seasoned programmers (newbies seem to like it...), but its high-level GUI is easy and fast to use. And it is rather small and can be "compiled" to a standalone exe.
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Granted knowledge is best retained when put into practice, but as programmers I'm sure there's just too much information. Besides annotating your books, what other methods do you use for your own personal knowledge-base so you can have an easily accessible reference?
Do you create your own wiki or use software like wikidpad, or save them as plain text, bookmarks, pdf, web pages etc..? Or do you just treat google/SO as your giant knowledge-base and search only when required?
You may find this similar
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10961/have-you-used-a-wiki-in-your-project-or-group, and of course this question can easily relate to non programmers as well.
Blog about it. That way you'll always have it no matter where you are, and that information gets shared with others.
I use Tiddlywiki to keep all of my development notes together, other than notes or handouts that I might get at a meeting that I want to keep. Those go into a folder for the particular project and I add a reference to them in my Tiddlywiki so that they don't get lost in the shuffle. I tag everything with a limited set of tags (rather than going overboard with the tagging, I have a set of 15 tags that cover the projects and categories I need) so I can get back to them quickly.
Works for me.
Otherwise, I blog about them as needed, use drive indexing for massive searching across lots of stuff, and keep a short daily summary of activities (1 or 2 lines) for better recall.
There are several solutions that I have seen people use successfully:
blog about it (as others have noted here)
maintain a Wiki (local or hosted)
keep it in a plain text file
use Backpack
use a hosted office solution (Google docs, Zoho)
email it to yourself in Gmail (yes, really :) well, makes stuff easily search able)
I personally use a TiddlyWiki (easy to use; very good search) which I carry around in a USB pen drive and which is also checked in to my SVN repository; and a small "notebook" (created from here) which fits neatly in a wallet, to jot down things when I am not near a computer.
Start a wiki.
ScrewTurn is what I use.
I've been storing my notes in Google Documents(google.com/docs). I've tried wikis but the cost of setup and maintenance hasn't been justified yet. I may need to look further into this option as my set of notes get larger.
Another thing to consider is ye olde programmer's physical notebook. Paper and pencil should never been underestimated in this digital age.
As far as personal Wiki software goes, I've been a big fan of VoodooPad for OSX. It's a nice self contained Wiki applications. No need to maintain a web server or have your Wiki hosted anywhere but your computer. Plus you can export into a variety of formats. It's very inuitive to use and can store just about anything you want.
It should also preserve syntax coloring if you were to extract a code sample (I don't have it in front of me so I cannot confirm).
I like Treepad for organizing notes. It's based around a tree structure, and each node can contain a text document, and have child nodes.
It's not particular designed for programming, but it's very easy to use.
org-mode for Emacs. I use it for planning work (short- and long-term), TODO items, random how-to notes (with clicky links to source files and URLs) — All in one single flat file. It has unicorns!
I use codekeep to store my code snippets
Occasionaly I store a few notes on google notes too
Mostly in a plain text on a flash drive, which is in the key ring along with keys from home. Plus eventually backups on the web site. This makes it available on any platform and in any place, wherever I go. There's still places without internet access you know.
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I want to draw user interfaces for web and desktop applications.
I need something less print-oriented than omnigraffle. think pixels!
Also, need good building blocks (aka stencils). Form elements, tableviews, etc.
I've been playing around with Balsamiq Mockups and it's OK for basic wireframes. I still prefer pen and paper sketches that are later refined in Photoshop when working on my own, but Balsamiq is useful when working in a team.
WireframeSketcher wireframing tool comes with fast and native UI on Mac. It works well with retina display too. There is a large built-in library of controls and extra stencils are available.
I very much like Omnigraffle, with stencils for UI design. More UI stencils are also available.
You might also check some other stackoverflow questions on this topic.
I'll be honest - I find Interface Builder just as fast as using Omnigraffle with (the aforementioned) stencils for prototyping desktop application UIs.
Plus the bonus is you get all of the available controls to look at.
Speaking of Illustrator, InDesign is actually better because you can do multipage layouts and use master pages for constants like headers/nav etc...
Axure just released Axure RP 5.6 for mac in Alpha. Great for websites and apps. http://axure.com/CS/blogs/axure/archive/2009/12/22/6104.aspx
You can also pair OmniGraffle with the free Web UX Template from Konigi.com
All these answers, and nobody has mentioned the grandaddy of them all?
Use Adobe Illustrator!
Create your own stencils / reusable components in layers and share those between documents.
Sharpie and paper first.
Then MAYBE illustrator to show detail close-ups if necessary.
With anything except Interface Builder you're going to have to get the standard UI control templates from somewhere else or make them yourself.
I've been using Lineform, which turns out to be pretty good at specifying dimensions in Pixels (just select "Points / Pixels" as the Measurement Unit in Lineform Preferences). That was something I had trouble doing in older versions of OmniGraffle (haven't used it lately though).
Try Skitch. It seems to be one of the best kept secrets for simple drawing and image manipulation on the Mac. I heard about it recently on TMO Geek Gab podcast.