Hi markel,

On 2 Aug 2004 at 2:00, markel <markel@metta.lk> spoke, thus:

[...]
> I am downloading the pkg_src collection, and the festival voice synth,
> docs, voices.  Will that read the shell text? (not in X, yet) That would
> also be very cool. 

Alone, no.  First though, test that your installation of Festival works by 
saying something like, e.g., "(sayText "Hello, world!")" after starting 
Festival.  However, you should know that there are smaller, lighter 
versions of Festival, written in C, or other synthesisers out there.  One 
of those is Flite, which is Festival Lite - a C port of Festival, 
essentially.  

Once you have a synth installed and talking to you, you need a screen 
reader.  The one which fits your general needs is YASR - 
http://yasr.sourceforge.net/ .  This one works by spawning a shell and 
intercepting input and output on the tty used by that shell.  Grab it, 
compile and install.  Configure.  

Last, but not least, you need something called an EmacsSpeak speech 
server.  EmacsSpeak is a self-voicing version of GNU Emacs using EmacsLISP 
to implement it, the so-called "Audio desktop".  However, the speech 
server is a network server or pipe which listens for connections from 
clients wishing to say stuff.  YASR supports these speech servers.  Find 
the speech server for Flite, which is available separately as Eflite, or 
the speech server for your particular synthesiser.  Grab, install.  Now, 
point your YASR at |/usr/bin/eflite or 127.0.0.1, whichever is 
appropriate, and start YASR.  You're away, with a talking shell, console 
applications, and text editors!  

Let me know if you need any help along the way.

Cheers,
Sabahattin
-- 
Thought for the day:
    Communist (n): one who has given up all hope
    of becoming a Capitalist.


Sabahattin Gucukoglu
Phone: +44 20 7,502-1615
Mobile: +44 7986 053399
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