speechd.. - implements the /dev/speech device -- all text written to this file will be spoken aloud. - was created by Kyle R. Burton , Darxus@op.net, and Michael Matsumura - is currently maintained by Darxus@op.net - is released under the GNU General Public License - is written in Perl The home page of this application is http://SpeechIO.undef.net -- you should probably check there for updates if you were not just there. To subscribe to the SpeechIO mailing list, send email to speechio-subscribe@lists.undef.net You are also incouraged to join us in the #SpeechIO Internet Relay Chat channel on EFNet. Setup: 1) Verify that your sound card is functional with some other application. 2) Install either the Festival or rsynth speech synthesis packages (Festival with a high quality (16 bit) voice is strongly recommended), or the "morse" program (to hear morse code instead of speech). 2.1) Festival can be obtained from http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/ I suggest using one of the high quality (16 bit) voices. I prefer the British voice. Both Debian and RedHat packages are available from the main package archives of each distribution. If you are installing Festival in Debian, I suggest you try doing it via an "apt-get install festival festvox_rablpc16k" command. 2.2) rsynth can be obtained from ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/sunsite/apps/sound/speech/ This thing is tiny, but the sound quality is not near that of Festival. 2.3) Alan Cox's "morse" program... there's a Debian package, I dunno where else it can be found. 3) Verify that your speech synthesis package is functional: 3.1) Festival: echo "this is a test" | festival --tts 3.2) rsynth: say "this is a test" 4) Run "make install". This will probably do something like: Copy speechd to /usr/local/bin Copy catspeech to /usr/local/bin Copy speechdrc to /etc Copy speechd.sub to /etc Change ownership of speechd & catspeech to root Change permissions of speechd & catspeech to 755 Create /dev/speech 5) If you would like to use rsynth instead of festival, edit /etc/speechdrc, comment out the '$synth = "festival";' line, and uncomment the '$synth = "rsynth";' line. If you would like to use speechd with esd (the Enlightened Sound Daemon (and you have it installed)), uncomment the $use_esd line. 6) Execute speechd. You should nolonger ever have to run speechd as root, as the creation of /dev/speech is handled by the install script. 7) Test speechd: echo "this is a test" > /dev/speech If you hear "this is a test" spoken aloud, it's working. 8) You will probably want to put speechd in a startup script somewhere in /etc/init.d catspeech is a seperate application created for use by speech.irc (also at http://SpeechIO.undef.net). It simply takes everything from STDIN and writes it to /dev/speech. It is included with speechd incase it may be useful in any other applications that make use of /dev/speech. Current applications supporting /dev/speech: * speech.irc - http://SpeechIO.undef.net full speech synthesis support for all Internet Relay Chat programs supporting the ircII scripting language. Created by Darxus. * slashes - http://SpeechIO.undef.net slashdot.org headline ticker w/ full speech synthesis support. Created by Alex Shnitman (alexsh@linux.org.il), speech synthesis support added by Darxus. I have sent my patch to the creator, but I do not believe he has included them yet. * mouth.tcl - http://www.limit.org/speech.php3 "A package for AOL's TiK that echos text to /dev/speech" Created by Michael Matsumura . Command line options: Usage: speechd [-qQf] [-H ] [-P ] [-s ] or speechd [-h] -e Use the Enlightened Sound Daemon -q Quiet mode (Supresses STDOUT) -Q Very quiet mode (Supresses STDOUT and STDERR) -f Run in foreground (Don't daemonize) -H Set the host to use (Default: localhost) -P Set the port to use (Default: 1314) -s Sets the speech synthesis package to use -h This help text If you have any updates/suggestions/requests, please subscribe to the SpeechIO list by emailing speechio-subscribe@lists.undef.net