Newsgroups: comp.speech
Path: pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!warwick!doc.ic.ac.uk!agate!ames!koriel!sh.wide!wnoc-kyo!atrwide!atr-la!paul
From: paul@itl.atr.co.jp (Paul Taylor)
Subject: Re: Technical question about ESPS package.
In-Reply-To: segura@hal.ugr.es's message of Wed, 29 Sep 1993 11:23:40 GMT
Message-ID: <PAUL.93Oct4115914@as51.itl.atr.co.jp>
Sender: news@itl.atr.co.jp (USENET News System)
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Organization: ATR Interpreting Telecommunications Research Labs., Japan
References: <1993Sep29.102642.11166@sevaxu.cica.es> <1993Sep29.112340.13316@sevaxu.cica.es>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1993 02:59:14 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <1993Sep29.112340.13316@sevaxu.cica.es> segura@hal.ugr.es (J.C. Segura Luna) writes:


>   You are free to think whatever you want. But in my opinion is better to
>   carefully read the manuals before making such statements.
Better in my mind to think about what serious programmers
would want to do with ESPS.

I dont know what sort of software you are used to, but ESPS is
*not* a friendly package. The basic problem is that although user
functions are included, which you can compile into your programs,
you then need a esps license every time you run those programs.
That means that every bit of my code that calls even a single, trivial
file io function, requires a full $5000 (or whatever) license to run.

To me that is unacceptable. The problem could be solved by entropic
making the file io functions public domain, or at least specifying the
format of the FEA files exactly. A better solution would be to have
ascii headers (and maybe data) like the nist sphere formats.

I dont know if entropic dont do this because they havent realised
the problem, or because they want to force people to buy more licenses.
I hope its the former, and that they will fix the problem soon. I
have my doubts though, as I mailed them with this problem more
than two months ago and haven't received a reply yet.

I would be pleased to hear from anyone who can read F0 track files
from the formant program without using ESPS code!


Paul Taylor
ATR, Japan.
(all opinions my own etc.)



