$Id: VIAVOICE 3902 2006-05-03 02:54:05Z raman $ Notes On Using IBM ViaVoice Outloud (Software TTS) with Emacspeak: IBM ViaVoice TTS (Text To Speech) formerly known as IBM ViaVoice Outloud is a text to speech synthesis engine that allows you to produce synthetic speech from text using a sound card. The TTS engine can be obtained from the RedHat FTP site --see below. * Pre-requisites: You need to obtain and install the IBM ViaVoice TTS (previously called Outloud) engine. The The ViaVoice TTS engine itself is not distributed as part of this package --see ftp://people.redhat.com/jlamb linked from http://www.redhat.com/services/techsupport/accessibility/s1-access-install.html You should only need to install the RTK (runtime toolkit). The Outloud speech server uses midi for producing auditory icons. You need to obtain and install package stdiosynth from http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/emacspeak/blinux/stdiom.tar.gz Note that that package comes pre-built --to compile it yourself you need the commercial OSS installation; however you do not need the commercial OSS package to use the pre-built binary. (Hackers note: I'm looking for a stdiosynth replacement, if you have the cycles to work on this it will be much appreciated.) * Installation: ** Is Outloud Working? Once you have successfully obtained and install IBM ViaVoice Outloud for Linux (RTK and SDK), first verify that the synthesis engine works by running the sample programs that come with that package. Note that the sample programs only come with the SDK. If you choose to only install the RTK (Run Time Kit) and run into trouble, you'll need the SDK to troubleshoot your problem. If you have only installed the RTK, first build the ViaVoice TTS server by: cd servers/linux-outloud make try starting the ViaVoice speech server by typing bash $ tcl /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/emacspeak/servers/outloud at the shell prompt. Only after verifying that the TTS engine works and that you hear the speech output should you proceed to installing the Emacspeak Outloud support. ** Have You Installed Emacspeak? Before attempting to build and install ViaVoice Outloud support for Emacspeak you should first install Emacspeak the normal way. See the Emacspeak Makefile for instructions. ** Compiling Outloud Support For Emacspeak: Change to the linux-outloud subdirectory of the Emacspeak source distribution. make This should compile the Emacspeak Outloud TCL library to produce a file called tcleci.so. * Testing: Next, test that your installation of the Emacspeak Outloud support works. The ViaVoice Outloud speech server is called outloud and is installed in the emacspeak directory along with other speech servers. To test this server, do: tcl <full path to outloud> This should speak a welcome message and display a tcl> prompt if all is well. * Using Outloud With Emacspeak: Proceed to this step *only* after successfully completing all of the previous steps. You can either make the Outloud engine your default synthesizer by setting environment variable DTK_PROGRAM as follows befoer launching Emacs: export DTK_PROGRAM=outloud Alternatively, you can switch to the Outloud engine while emacspeak is running by invoking command dtk-select-server --type C-e d d ret outloud ret * Using outloud as the default synthesizer: Once you've confirmed that everything is working with the Outloud engine and Emacspeak, you can make outloud your default synthesizer by: ** If you start emacspeak by typing emacspeak: Supply the -o command-line option i.e. start emacspeak as emacspeak -o ** If you have emacspeak launched from inside your .emacs: set variable dtk-program to "outloud" before you load emacspeak-setup.el * Missing Features: The following standard emacspeak features are not yet supported: *** All caps beep *** Capitalization beep * Known Problems: ** Outloud server dies sporadically: *** Avoid Character echo if possible There is a known problem with the ViaVoice Outloud engine on Linux with certain sound cards when stopping and starting speech in rapid succession. When using Emacspeak, this bug manifests itself as the speech server sporadically dying. In my own use, I've found the Outloud server to be mostly usable with character echo turned off. However, expect to have to restart the server at times by hitting C-e C-s until this bug in the Linux soundcard support goes away. *** Sound Device Should be Free: If you have other programs using the sound device, the Outloud engine will not work. If you use the Outloud engine for your primary TTS, you will not get any speech feedback if you play realaudio or use other programs that open and hold the wave device --unless you are using a new soundcard like the SBLive capable of playing multiple streams of audio. Alternatively, get a sound card like the Soundblaster SBLive capable of mixing multiple channels of audio. Local variables: mode: outline paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$" end: