RE: Yoruba Text to Speech

Thanks Mr. Adegbola

All you need is 'Total video converter' this program is good at encoding & decoding both video and audio files, either Web, DVD, Portable player, Mobile phone or PDA (Pocket PC)

Follow this link for free trial:

http://www.effectmatrix.com/total-video-converter/index.htm

Sir Lawie
[YorubaWorld Information Service]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yorubaworld/

Need new Rip DVD to AVI ?
Rip DVD to AVI
Have a nice surfing！

Thanks Tunde, BTW I just came across a report of a recent meeting at which you and your colleague presented about Yoruba language and ICT:

Daily Sun
"How computer can boost learning of Yoruba language and culture"
By SOLA BALOGUN
Sunday, May 25, 2008
http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/feat...-25-05-2008-001.htm

Don

One of our associates, Dr. Tunji Odejobi of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Obafemi Awolowo University is working on Yoruba Speech Synthesis and has developed a software that works.
He is at present at University of Cork in Ireland where he will be for the next year. I shall make him aware of this demand.
Tunde

Is there any 'text to speech software' that can read Yoruba text?

Here's part of a reply Andrew sent to Samuel's inquiry (also last Nov.):

Not all Yoruba Unicode keyboard layouts produce the same sequence of Unicode codepoints, so testing with alternative character sequences should be done,

e.g. in Unicode the letter Ọ́ can be represented as <U+004F U+0323 U+0301> (NFD), <U+004F U+0301 U+0323>, <U+1ECC U+0301> (NFC) or <U+00D3 U+0323>. These are canonically equivalent and should display the same. But it is necessary to test fonts with all combinations.

Andrew

Last November, Samuel Olamijulo sent this question concerning new Gentium fonts to selected lists and individuals. It included a copy of an announcement by the creator of these fonts. I'm posting it all here with a question as to what kind of response there was and any further thoughts about Gentium and Yoruba. Don

---------------
Please what do you think of these new Gentium Basic and Gentium Book fonts offers in relation to still much needed enhancing of Yoruba Language Display and Storage on the INTERNET, complete with tonal signs and under dots ?
 
Thank you for your time.
Dr Samuel Kayode Olamijulo
**********************************
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Gentium-Announce List <owner-gentiumlist@lists.sil.org>
To: Gentium-Announce <gentium-announce@lists.sil.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2007 6:51:51 AM
Subject: [Gentium] Update #5 - Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic available for testing

Gentium-Announce List
Update #5 - Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic available for testing
- - - - - - - -

Dear friends of Gentium,

Great news! We have been hard at work to complete the first versions of Gentium that include bold and bold italic. For the first time in many years we have a major release for you - in a preliminary test version.

We have two new font families in the Gentium clan: Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic. Each has a complete set of four weights: regular, italic, bold and bold italic. Gentium Book Basic is generally heavier than the original Gentium and better for some publishing uses. Both families also include a few OpenType and Graphite smart font features, including optimized diacritic positioning. I've appended parts of the Gentium Basic FONTLOG below to give you more detailed information on these fonts.

The new fonts are called 'Basic' because they support a smaller set of characters than the full Gentium fonts. They only support basic Latin and a handful of extended Latin characters. There is no Greek or Cyrillic, or even full IPA. The purpose is to provide early versions of the new weights that meet the needs of most Latin script users.

Never fear - we haven't abandoned the main Gentium fonts. Our next task will be to return to them and complete an update of the existing regular and italic to add extended Cyrillic, ancient Greek glyphs, Unicode 5.1 updates, and smart font capabilities. We'd hoped to have this completed by now, but wanted to get the new weights to you as soon as we could. After that we plan to expand the main Gentium family to include these new weights and smart font code.

The new Basic fonts are only available in beta test right now. They contain known bugs, so we don't yet recommend them for everyday production use, or as the source for derivative versions. The most serious one is that the lowercase 'z' has too much space in the heavier italic weights. We plan to release a fixed, final release of the Basic fonts in a month or two, once initial broad testing is done. So we welcome your bug reports and general opinions on the design of the heavier faces.

The beta test fonts are available at:

    http://scripts.sil.org/Gentium_basic

A few requests:

- please note the limitations and known problems
- please do not ask us to expand the Basic character set, as those needs will be met by the complete Gentium font family
- please report problems to me at the email address below, not via the download feedback form on the main Gentium download page

Thanks again for your interest in Gentium, and the many encouraging emails you have sent.

Victor Gaultney
Gentium /at/ sil.org

I have been given to understand that there is a project involving University of Wisconsin and University of Oregon concerning Yoruba fonts. Am seeking more information. Does anyone know anything about it?

Don

Edited by author 04-06-2008 05:47 PM
FYI, the Aflat.org site has an "Automatic Diacritic Restoration" utility that can be used for Yoruba. See http://www.aflat.org/?q=node/184 , and let us (and them) know what you think!

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net

The small vertical line below is supposed to be always contiguous with the base letter. The rational is that the character should be seen as one whole character rather than a base character and a modifier.

If I may reiterate the background, the vertical line was proposed as against the dot because with use, the dot wore off and disappear from the die before the base character. This was in the days of die casting. Hence, the contiguity of the small vertical line and the base character promoted longevity of the die.

Now that printing technology has changed radically, thank to ICT, the problem of the wearing dot has disappeared but few have taken notice. The under dot now seems to be tolerated because the dot does not wear.

I think the change in printing technology may instigate or ultimately force a change in the standard.

Edited by author 01-18-2008 06:54 PM
Happy New Year all (belatedly)!*

I have a quick question about the positioning of the small vertical line below (U+0329) in the "classical" usage (as opposed to the more commonly used dot under/subdot). Is it:
a) always contiguous with the base letter
b) usually contiguous with the base letter
c) sometimes contiguous, sometimes separate

It's a question relevant to any effort to (1) provide for positioning of the vertical line or (2) design a combined glyph. This is not a question about line vs. dot (I think that was pretty much resolved a while back) but on what the "correct" or "ideal" use of the line is, when it is used.

A separate question is whether any other languages in the region use (or have used) the line under and if so how they position it.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org

*It's International Year of Languages. See http://tinyurl.com/yofvdf

The One Laptop Per Child project (see /m282 & /m331) has a page for people who want to work on localization at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pootle#Sign-up . For languages like Yoruba not yet in the table, it looks like you will have to add appropriate rows in order to enter your name.

Note link to their page on Yoruba.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org