[mary-users] Request for feedback in preparation for upcoming MARY TTS 5.0 beta

[Marc Schroeder]

Dear MARY TTS users,

It's been quite a while since the last MARY TTS release. In the 
meantime, we have pushed through a major restructuring -- modularizing 
the MARY TTS code base, moving towards Maven as a build tool, shifting 
the source repository onto github...

It is my goal to release MARY TTS 5.0 beta in May. To make sure the code 
is as usable as possible, I would like to invite everybody to try out 
the current marytts master version on github and to provide feedback:

https://github.com/marytts/marytts

The major known limitation at this time is that there is only one voice 
(cmu-slt-hsmm) which is included in the project.

In particular, I would appreciate feedback on the following aspects:

- MARY TTS 5 brings a new, easier-to-use API which can be used 
identically for an embedded and a client-server TTS:
https://github.com/marytts/marytts/wiki/MaryInterface
Comments on the usability of this API would be most welcome at this stage.

- Help would be needed in testing the Windows scripts for launching the 
various parts of the system, see 
https://github.com/marytts/marytts/issues/16

- There is some minimal documentation on how to build and run MARY TTS 5 
in the README at the bottom of https://github.com/marytts/marytts -- how 
does this documentation need to be improved?

- There is a voice upgrade tool which can be used to convert MARY TTS 
4.x voices into MARY TTS 5 format; after "mvn install", it is available 
as target/marytts-builder-5.0-SNAPSHOT/bin/upgrade-marytts4-voices.sh ; 
but this tool is not very well tested yet, so any help testing this 
would be welcome.

- Which of the old unresolved tickets on the TRAC system 
(http://mary.opendfki.de/report/3) do you care about most? -> You can 
show your interest in having a ticket resolved by copying it over from 
the old TRAC to the new Github issue tracker at 
https://github.com/marytts/marytts/issues !


Please bear in mind that my time is extremely limited, so I cannot make 
any promises that I can fulfil any particular request. If you think you 
can fix something yourself, feel free to fork the project on github, 
make the change, and issue a pull request. Thanks in advance! In any 
case, I'll do my best to provide a usable 5.0 beta system before the end 
of May.

Best regards,
Marc

-- 
Dr.-Ing. Dr. phil. Marc Schröder, Senior Researcher at DFKI GmbH
Homepage: http://www.dfki.de/~schroed
Email: marc.schroeder at dfki.de
Phone: +49-681-85775-5303
Postal address: DFKI GmbH, Campus D3_2, Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, D-66123 
Saarbrücken, Germany
--
Official DFKI coordinates:
Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH
Trippstadter Strasse 122, D-67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Geschaeftsfuehrung:
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Wahlster (Vorsitzender)
Dr. Walter Olthoff
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Prof. Dr. h.c. Hans A. Aukes
Amtsgericht Kaiserslautern, HRB 2313