HISTORY.txt

/*
* FPMs-TCTS SOFTWARE LIBRARY
*
* File:    HISTORY.txt
* Purpose: History of the Mbrola Speech Synthesizer
* Authors:  Mbrola Team
* Email :  mbrola@tcts.fpms.ac.be
*
* Copyright (c) 1995-2018 Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (TCTS lab)
* This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
* GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
* along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*
* HISTORY:
*
* 15/06/95 : created
*
* 26/06/95 : modified and adapted to Sun by V. Pagel
*
* 08/08/95 : checked for PC/DOS and modified accordingly
*            dummy chars in database struct; fopen("t or b"); prototypes
*
* 22/08/95 : correction of OLA : energy correction only applies to frame
*
* 05/09/95 : pagelization of the style ! thank you, Vince.
*
* 11/09/95 : fixed a bug in intermediate pitch interpolation (Curtime increment)
*            fixed a bug in last sound flushing (put a silence)
*            fixed a bug in Concat -> need the number of 1st ola frame
*              for cur_diph
*
* 13/09/95 : No pitch modification on NV frames.
*
* 14/09/95 : Added ';' for comments in command file, and # for flushing
*            fixed horrible bug with non weigthed smoothing window
*
* 18/09/95 : fixed bug in Concat : validity test for begin and end.
*
* 19/09/95 : length1 and length2 in samples instead of millisec
*            Add time_crumbs mechanism to balance slow drifting in
*            phoneme durations -> keeps total duration close to original
*
* 12/10/95 : Free copy and use for non commercial apps. V1.00
*            Dummy instructions added for protection of rights.
*            20 pitchpatternpoints, 1000 synthesis OLA frames per phoneme (10 sec)
*            Max 250 successive phonemes with no prosodic info (25sec)
*
* 13/10/95 : 1.0a optimization in OLA ( previously wrote sample by sample)
*
* 16/10/95 : DEBUG defined; fixed stupid bug in Initialize.
*
* 18/10/95 : 1.0c now accepts database location as command line parameter.
*
* 24/10/95 : 1.01 One and only one data file per voice/language
*
* 06/11/95 : GetPitch if V (previously also if NV_TRA)
*            A lot of new debug info (DEBUG2)
*            Hamming weighting window (was triangle)
*            Check next (original) diphone for concatenation length
*            VREG VREG... VREG VTRA => VTRA smoothed, too
*            F0 limits=f(database)
*            Added cur_diph->d.RightPhone = PhoneTable[0]; after call to
*                      FillCommandBuffer !
*            Correction of diphone length=f(really synthesized data)
*            Lenanal in MatchProsody : nb_frames*MBRPeriod (was nb_frames+1)
*            Magic checking of database format
*            1.02 : TimeRatio and FreqRatio
*
* 10/11/95 : 1.02a Last bug with Lenanal and nb_frames*MBRPeriod
*            Replace RealLastSample with last_time_crumb to avoid
*            sample counter overflow.
*            Architecture panic test.
*
* 21/02/96 : 1.03a DEBUG3 added for compatibility with the BACON coded database
*            Many output audio file formats added ( RIFFwav, au, aiff, raw )
*            Now skips empty lines (caused bugs on PC when file ends with CR)
*
* 22/02/96 : 1.03b Get rid of little endian or big endian databases thanks
*            to BIG_ENDIAN or LITTLE_ENDIAN -> we choose to keep the FR1-PC
*            database to give a little advantage to powerless PCs !!!
*
* 27/02/96 : 1.03c Reintroduce changes made in lost branch 1.02b
*            It concerns the "odd" variable to reverse one unvoiced frame out
*            of 2 to avoid the perception of a 133Hz signal in unvoiced phones
*
*            Concat : limitframe cheks for real phoneme border within diphone
*
* 28/02/96 : 1.04a Ad hoc order 2 BACON DECODER included in a separate file
*            -> load_diphone function... This required to read each diphone
*            once, i.e. fusion of access (Concat & MBRola) through buffer
*            which is now a field of Diphone_Synth
*            LoadDiphone is now a pointer to Basic_LoadDiphone or to 
*            Bacon_LoadDiphone depending on the Coding scheme
*
*            DEBUG3 is out for the moment !
*
* 29/02/96 : 1.04b THE BIG SPLITTING -> the whole thing in now spreaded in 
*            many files to increase readability.
*            Make thing ready for hash tables !!!!
*
* 01/03/96 : 1.04c Smart acces to the diphone reference ( hash tables ) 
*            instead of sequential search -> we get an average 1.595506
*            strncmp by diphone search !!!!! (still better than 600) 
*            -> the Diphone base structure was modified to add linked list 
*               mechanism of hash table, I used the old "int8 dummy[3]"
*               space for this !
*
* 04/03/96 : 1.04d synth1 and synth2 become pointers cause PCs don't have 
*            enough space in data segment ( 64Ko ).
*            HBK = Horrible Bug Killing in Concat -> when the left diphone
*            is _-_  last_frame is negative
*            Bug in hash_table -> introduce EMPTY=-1 and NONE=255
*            Can now use uppercase and lowercase symbols for phones -> correct
*            a bug in LowerCase which did not add trailing 0
*
* 14/03/96 : 2.00a The name of the whole project is changed in MBROLA to 
*            avoid confusion with CNET's Psola-td
*
* 18/03/96 : 2.00b string.h is now in common.h to compile on Linux, a bug with
*            (* char) Magic which is not aligned on a 4* address
*
* 28/03/96 : 2.00b -> Cancel the 1.04d modif to read uppercase and lower
*            case phones, as we now use SAMPA alphabet, and the case of
*            the symbol is discriminant
*
* 13/05/96 : 2.00c Better coder in database_bacon.c
*
* 07/06/96 : 2.00d Panic Checking for _-_ diphone in the database
*           Add a mechanism to change Time and frequency ratios in the .pho
*           file ( comment line beginning with T=0.8 or F=1.2 )
*           Filenames were shortened to 8 char for MSDOP :-\
*           Another MSDOP checking for empty lines -> if we listen to the
*           Borland C Scanf, an empty line has one char: the carriage return!
*
* 25/06/96 : 2.01a HBK with interp_length which caused core dumps or
*           clics in the signal (negative frequency shift !) 
*           FIRST_PITCH becomes First_Pitch which account for MBRPeriod of
*           the diphone database.
* 
* 04/07/96 : 2.01b Eliminate some dumb smoothing attempt for unvoiced frames,
*          in the ola routine. In Concat eliminate useless smoothw computed 
*	    on unvoiced frames -> Faster and more secure
*
* 16/07/96 : 2.01c Complete repackaging of the tables constants -> more
*           sensible values, and and tests to check we're not out of the 
*           limits.
*
* 31/07/96 : 2.01d Introduce automatic detection of little endian with
*          __i386__ , fflush with # symbol, sample rate is writen in the
*          audio file header (except for AIFF for the moment due to 80bit
*          IEEE representation)
*
* 12/09/96 : 2.01e Check for saturation when we make the conversion to 
* 	    integers.
*
*          Correct a typo with smooth() and smoothw(), no related bug.
*
*          Get rid of the pitch limitation (No /2 or *2 limits)
*          -> this implied a special case for extra low pitch (more than
*          div 2 with 0 filling of the output. More rational memove as
*          well as ola bufer sizes!!!
*
*          F0 and POS become float (more precisions for F0 since new limits
*	    allow singing and that it requires a more precise pitch
*
* 18/09/96 : 2.02a Change the format of the database.... Skim a few bytes
*          from place to place in the header -> 16 bytes become 8 byte in
*          the diphone structure. V/UV decisions becomes a bitstream
*
* 26/09/96 : 2.02b Because the german database is huge (12Mo) and its pitch
*          is high (200Hz), there's an overflow on pos_pm signed short
*          A temporary fix before I imagine something better consist in
*          declaring uint16 (unsigned int16) for pitch mark referencing
*	
* 05/12/96 : 2.02c Typechecking for unsigned int lead to a separated
*          function readl_uint16 -> more compatibility with compilers
*
*          VolumeRatio is now a new parameter in the command line
*
*          Coding scheme compatible with 2.02b in database_bacon (split
*          the old InitDatabase into 3 functions for modularity
*
* 12/12/96 : 2.02d
*   Pack what concern phonemes in readpho.c
*   Pack what concern mbrola synthesis itself in mbrola.c
*   Synth.c contain a main program for standalone compilation
*   Library.c contains Read/Write functions in a DLL like style
*   
*   Modify the behavior of NextDiphone so that it adds trailing silence 
*   when EOF or when Flush. It implies there is no special case for last
*   diphone synthesis. It is used in library.c, a Read/Write approach to
*   mbrola synthesizer -> many variables of mbrola.c where defined global
*   for the purpose of externaly control the process
*		 
* 29/01/97: 2.03a
* Diphone names can be longer than 2 characters (it's now a Zstring). To
* avoid a new diphone database format (the current one explicitely limits the
* size to 2 chars) we introduce the RENAME command which allows to
* dynamically rename a phoneme into another. This scheme may also be used to
* transform a non SAMPA alphabet into mbrola compatible version.
*
* To do so we have parametrized the functions of the hash_table type, and
* added a 'dirty' flag, as RENAMING implies "delete" and "add" -> of course
* with coalescent hashing the performance would dramatically drop if we 
* indivually modify the phonemes, thus after a renaming session, we 
* completely compute the hash_table again.
*
* 02/02/97: 2.03b
* database.c has been modified by Thierry Dutoit to allow diphone duplication
* without changing the format of our database -> diphone duplications are 
* indicated at the end of the Main Index (detected when the Pitchmark 
* position reach the end of the pitchmark table). For example the diphone
* a-ch can be easily declared as a-t.
*
* readpho.c modified to allow pitchpairs surrounded by ()s
*
* We try to include a standard VisualC++ make file directory
*
* 6/02/97 : 2.03c
*
* synth.c : since the order on the command line has been changed, many 
* people unintentionally destroy their .pho files writing the wav on it.
* -> we go back to the older format "mbrola dba file_in* file_out"
*
* diphone.h : maximum diphone size is raised from 8000 samples to 10000 
*             because of the german database
* readpho.c : %2s is removed since now phoneme names can be longer than 2
*             chars
*     a_line is too short to allow MAXNPITCHPATTERNPOINTS in it !
*     Allocate 4 char instead of 3 for Silence and Flush (alastair Sinton)
*     Tweaking with EOF and FLUSH in case of library compilation mode
*
* library.c : include defines for the Windows DLL
*
* hash_tab.c : after a renaming, must update cur_diph and prev_diph 
*              reference in the hash_tab
*
* 20/02/97: 2.03d Put a clear difference between comment and commands in 
*           pho files. Comment= ;  Command= ;;
*
* 26/03/97: 2.03e Sanity check when replacing diphones 
*                  -> check the target of the replacement exist
*
* 29/05/97: 2.03f Pseudo C++ to benefit from the Catch/Throw mechanism in the
*         DLL and LIBRARY version.
*
*         Changes the behavior of readpho -> we wait for a pitch point to
*         treat the lines... It's a tradeoff: either we don't alow this, 
*         then we can't warranty that asynchronious read/write will respect
*         the right pitch curve, either we behave this way, and a pitch
*         point is COMPULSORY before any sound breaks out.
*     
*         Use fake C++ lists -> the big jump to STL is planned for 2.04
*
*         Gives a politically correct memory freeing scheme (prepare for C++ 
*         and satisfy PC users !).
*
* 02/07/97: 2.04a New approach to get the last diphone (supposedly _-_) of 
*         the dba.
*         
*         Error.{cpp,h} become vp_error because of name conflict on Visual
*         not such a clever thing to use "test" "error" "windows" names :-)
*
*         In Readpho.cpp correct a strange bug with PitchFactor !
*
*         No jump to STL lists for the moment (no time)
*
*		     Pitchmarks now use 32 bit, thanks to the database from French 
*         Britany -> hack in the database header to keep compatibility with
*         previous databases.
*
* 15/07/97: 2.04b A. Ruelle changes the windows DLL interface to Winapi
*         calling standard and adds Last_MBR_Error2 for Visual Basic.
*         Vincent Pagel: a bug with circular buffer and "unsigned int" in 
*                        library.cpp
*         readpho.cpp -> EOF/FLUSH management in the DLL/LIBRARY version 
*         (eof means wait for new data to be available). In the standalone
*         version EOF on a regular file means add a trailing _ and exit.
*
* 21/08/97: 2.04c in ReadDatabasePitchmark, unsigned int for Borland C++
*
*         database_bacon was not in accordance with database concerning 
*         replacement diphones (changed in 2.04a)
*
* 07/10/97: 2.05a New database format :-) the limitation of 2 chars per
*   phoneme is too hard to cope with -> 
*         database_bacon.cpp, database.h and database.cpp changed
* 
*   reapho.cpp: Target frequency to get cartoon voices as proposed by
*          Arthur Dirksen
*
*   library.cpp: Add GetVersion_MBR for the DLL to be aware of the
*          release number of the synth, and getFreq_MBR for the client
*          to change the sampling rate of the soundcard properly with
*          voice characteristic modification
*
*   readpho.cpp: new sanity check -> verify that the target of the copy
*          is not overriden. It unveils a bug in hash_search
*
*   hash_tab.cpp: hash_search stupidly supposes that the primary hit is
*          never empty :-p
* 
*
*   library.h: Alain Ruelle removes LastErrorStr2
*
* 20/10/1997 : 2.05b For my 27th birthday, add database information at
*     the end of the dba in the form of Zstrings (phoneme set, copyright 
*     informations) -> database.cpp
*
*   synth.cpp : switch -i to get dba information
*
*   library.h : Retrievable with getInfo_MBR
*
*   common.h  : freeNull -> bug ! The macro is not surrounded by {}
*
*   mbrola.cpp: incredible bug in the smoothing algorithm... Can't 
*       understand how it escaped unoticed for 2 years :-0 Maxnconcat
*       is limited to 6 frames (just the opposite in the previous one)
*       And we check we don't explore frames out of scope with nb_begin
*       and nb_end
*
* 05/11/97 2.05c : 
*       make this version compatible with BACON coded databases :-)
*
* 01/12/97 2.05d :
*       New -e flag and E=ON | OFF directive to ignore missing diphones
*
* 05/12/97 2.06a :
*       Using a hamming window instead of a hanning window was such a bad
*   idea for the american english database.
*
* 21/01/98 2.06b :
*   Sort of database_display information in debug mode -> replace the 
*   old dedicated program
*   Integration of the directory VisualDll for the compilation of a DLL
*   under Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0
*
*   Most of all a full documentation now included in the DOCUMENTATION
*   directory, and more comments in the code
*
* 02/02/98 2.06c :
*   readtype_MBR function to directly read audio data in LIN16, MULAW
*   and other convenient formats. Internally we keep floats for the
*   moment to represent the ola buffer.
*
* 25/02/98 3.00a :
*   database_cebab.cpp : A new database type DIPHONE_CEBAB compressed
*       for Internet users. 
*   database.cpp: A lot of cleaning in the list of available dba formats
*       only 2.05 or later are compatible
*
* 24/06/98 3.01a : alpha release. Mbrola has drifted toward object
* oriented style (constructor, destructor and a "this" pointer for
* each function). As a consequence one can instanciate as many
* synthesis channel (Mbrola object) as he wishes with one or more
* database. It uses polymorphism to implement the diversity of
* connections with Diphone Databases (Database object), and with the
* provider of Phonemes (Parser object). Polymorphism implies
* indirections tables to find the right method. 
* 
* Main Objects:
*
* Parser -> phoneme provider     ( init, reset, close, nextphone )
* Database -> a diphone database ( init, reset, close, getdiphone)
* Mbrola -> it's a synthesizer engine that runs with Database and
*           Parser 
*
* As usually 2 modes to use Mbrola: 
*
*     1) Standalone (an exe file that takes a .pho and produces a
*  .wav, the main iteration takes place on input) 
*
*     2) Library or DLL version, where the main iteration takes place
*  on audio output buffers, at the cost of a small system overhead
*
* The library has 2 mode: MULTICHANNEL, and MONOCHANNEL. The second
* is here for the sake of compatibility with previous mbrola DLLs, it
* instanciate a DLL able to build one Mbrola object with one
* Database. The first category on the other hand is able to build as
* many Mbrola, with as many Databases and Parser as you wish.
*
* Of course those modification imply a complete revamping of all the
* sources. The main changes are in readpho.cpp that has been splitted
* into a Fifo and Parser object ( see the Parser directory ). It's
* heavily based on abstract types: parser.h. IMPORTANT : the
* instanciation of parser.h can be user defined (as long as it returns
* Phone objects).
*  
* 26/06/98 3.01b : the beta one. Database.cpp is now splitted into
*  databaseBasic (raw), databaseBacon (commercial scheme),
*  databaseCebab (WWW scheme), and quite important databaseOld which
*  is a rebirth of formats older than 2.05 (too many users complained
*  about compatibility loss in 3.00a)
*
*  From a user's point of view, there is a change in the behavior of
*  FLUSH -> the size of the audio buffer is now precisely the one
*  requested (no need to include a dummy "_ 0" phoneme. Corrected a
*  bug on the limit of pitch point interpolations.
*
*  Added a constellation of get*Mbrola set*Mbrola to change
*  parameters at runtime.
*
*  Modify init_Mbrola slightly (don't give the parser from the start,
*  since it can be plugged and unplugged as one wish).
*
*  This version is purified !
*
*  01/08/98 3.01c : 
*   All .cpp files become .c file, and compile with 'cc'
* 
*   Visual C++ DLL works again
*   Visual C++ Standalone project
*
*   remove when possible #ifdef on BIG_ENDIAN ->
*                introduce readl_int16buffer ( little_big.cpp )
*   
*	  move the 2 iterations ( LIBRARY and STANDALONE ) into mbrola.cpp
*
*   use of uint8 instead of int8 for unsigned operations
*
*   the vocal tract ratio is plugged again
*
*   Phoneme renaming and cloning mechanism
*
* 01/09/98 3.01d :
*
* make a clean package with all the 3.01c features. Demo1.c to 
* show the use of the one_channel mode, and demo2.c for the 
* multi-channel mode.
*
* 09/09/98 3.01e : The big deal
*
*  A new make file allowing checking and purifying -> the "check" target
*  allows to compare a test set against previous standard output.
*  The panacea is "make PURE=purify check" to verify that no memory leak
*  was introduced.
*
*  Replacement for C++ Catch/Throw. Database returns error code, as well
*  as the engine (no longjump because of multichannel mode -> would have
*  urged us to include a [env] structure in all our objects or as a parameter
*  to the different functions)... a return code is cheap compared to that.
*
*  Forget old limitations with appendf0_Phone, can as many pitch points as 
*  you feel like the PitchPoint table is resized
*
*  (Nearly) forget old limitations with append_PhoneBuff, if there
*  are too many phonemes without pitch, we force a default
*  pitch. This is not really unkind as the limit is 250 phonemes.
*
*  Solidify the code of destructors for premature exit in Database*, 
*  DiphoneSynthesis and Mbrola
*
*  Interface modified -> reset_MBR now returns True/False value 
*		  (since everybody now returns error code, got to catch it)
*
*  Bug with fatal_message -> enlarge the buffer (too small for the largest 
*  message)
*  
*  CODE IS PURIFIED (at last we have the license !). Memory leak corrected
*  on cloning. Unallocted free memory corrected with close_MBR and reset_MBR
*  by adding reset_DiphoneSynthesis
*
*  Hopefully OneChannel mode is ready for WWW distrib as a DLL
*
*  Provide DLL_USE for Visual C++
*
*  Write a "de la mort" documentation with Word97
*
*  05/10/98 3.01f : add initSized_Phone to avoid multiple realloc on each
*  appendf0 (generally the number of pitch points is known from the start)
* 
*  20/10/98 3.01g : Mainly for people using Festival, give the possibility 
*  to move the command line parameters into an initialization file compatible
*  with .set files. Had to modify rename_list to allow the parsing of renaming
*  script (loose compatibility with previous ;;RENAME command), and to allow
*  initialization of Flush from the command line (init_PhoneBuffer).
*
*  Correctly implement flush_MBR for people using renaming.
*
*  10/06/99 3.01h:
*   Wrong definition for signal handling
*   Return value of Bacon getdiphone_DatabaseFunction
*   Pb with Concat and 0ms phonemes on PC (division by 0)
*   Laurent Hubaut detects bug with zero_padding (non decremented)
*   Laurent Hubaut and Susanne Eismann detect bug with non zeroed ola_win
*   Remove all "exit" statements in the library version, except in MBRMALLOC
*   Default parser now add a 0ms silence before each silence to avoid spreading
*      of small noises in front of EXTRA long silences.
*
* 29/03/00 3.02a: FUNCTIONAL TEST IS NOT THE SAME AS 3.01h DUE TO SMOOTHING
* 
* 1) New feature: diphone sizes and period size are not limited anymore
* this will let you define new databases at 22050Hz and male voices at
* 100Hz if you feel like to (see Engine/diphone.h)
*
* 2) Bug in smoothing: don't smooth anything with extra short frames (0ms)
*    (Engine/mbrola.c)
*
* 3) Back in time with pitchmarks: they are kept compressed (2 bits / mark) even 
* when downloaded in memory (stingy ROM usage)
*
* 4) Revolution in the Database directory due to arrival of ROM
* databases. Those ones are simply memory dumps of a database at work,
* once a Database* object is initialized, functionalities are exactly
* the same as regular databases. Works for RAW, BACON and CEBAB
*
* To do this, had to remove many indirections in Hashtable, and add
* rom_database.c + rom_handling.c source files.
* 
* Modified the standalone version to add -w and -W options:
*     ./synth -W fr1 creates a fr1.rom image of the database.
*
*     for debugging purpose:
*     ./synth -w fr1 test.pho test.wav 
*     it download fr1.rom image and synthesize the test.
* 
* Added a ROMDATABASE_PURE mode: lets you work with Mbrola without FILE*
*
* 26/09/01 3.02b: small bug correction -> a strong limit on the number
* of phonemes (256) prevents us from using diphones
*
* Ansi-ness of the code -> problem with the typecast on an lvalue with
* the database(dba) operation	
*
* TODO:
* May optimize FlushFile for Library mode to avoid 2 moves on samples at 
* the price of a medium size audio buffer.
*/