On 7/28/05, James B. Byrne <ByrneJB at harte-lyne.ca> wrote: > I am setting up a laptop (Sony VAIO PCG-4?) for my learning disabled > son (age 11). I have previously used MicroSoft 2Kpro and XPpro / > Office 2K platforms for text-to-speech applications as that is what > most commercial LD Assist software is written for. However, with MS > now requiring that one inventories ones entire computer software > configuration with them before getting updates to their software > coupled with the high risk nature of doing without those updates, I > am reluctant to continue this practice. No Comment. > What I am looking for is a robust, good quality, text-to-speech > reader that can work with Open Office under CentOS4. I have googled > extensively but frankly I need a bit of guidance as to what is the > best of breed available. If the package uses/supports ATT Natural > Voices as an option then that would be wonderful as I already have > the necessary licences for those voices. Does anyone here have any > experience with this type of software and can recommend a particular > package? Commercial apps. are fine. It is functionality I am after, > not economies. The only text to speech app that I'm familiar with on the linux side is Festival, which is included in the base centos repository. Apart from that I haven't had much experience, but I've got a few links that I can provide to hopefully point you in a decent direction. They're not part of the default centos, but if they seem like what you want, feel free request a build. I'm sure there's enough people here willing to help. http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/ <-- Gnome Accessibility project http://www.baum.ro/gnopernicus.html <-- Screen Reader for Gnome http://lars.atrc.utoronto.ca/current.html <-- general accessibility resource site http://www.eklhad.net/linux/jupiter/ <-- Console kernel level screen reader. http://www-306.ibm.com/software/voice/viavoice/dev/index.shtml <-- IBM ViaVoice for Linux -- Jim Perrin System Administrator -UIT Ft Gordon & US Army Signal Center