IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and Cepstral

[RadSurfer]

Are there any existing IRC Channels to discuss Cepstral or any Text-to-Speech technology?

If not. I was thinking how great it would be to start a brand new channel on Freenode to discuss in real time Cepstral and other Text-to-Speech topics!

I have already created my own channels on Freenode, so its certainly easy enough. Those who might like to chat in real time can do so, while still having this forum as well.

If this seems like a good idea, then let me know what you think.
We can decide on a name and then create the channel.

I am also interested in creating a Xchat for linux plugin (.so) that will be able to take chat text from the various xchat text event hooks, and feed it directly to Cepstral voices for reading in real time.
I have already accomplished with Sapi 4 on Win32, so I already have a foundation to work with... I am just not certain I am skilled enough to do this with the Cepstral speech engine. I would appreciate assistance and testing other peoples approach to such a project.
Just load the xchat plugin and sit back and listen to the chat text! A real help to people with vision problems and anyone else interested in a speaking IRC client.

Speaking of user-created Cepstral software, I have been able to actually compile the sample source code that comes bundled with the Linux Cepstral engine. It took some trail-and-error, but I managed it, and the programs seem to run just fine!
I am concerned with some "lag" in reading individually-feed lines of text from a text file, but that may only be due to my current programming skills in C, I am sure I have much to learn.

All of these kinds of things could be discussed in real-time on our IRC channel... if we can start up one... it may help "amateur" software developers get a foot-hold on things they want to learn, as well as helping anyone who wants to join in. THANKS.

//RadSurfer//