Introduction

You can take advantage of Text-To-Speech in Ubuntu by using a program called Festival. Because by default it doesn't work with ESD (the sound mixer that comes by default with Dapper), a little of manual tweaking is needed.

This is not meant to be a guide on how to use Festival (for that, read the Festival user docs), but simply how to get it working on Ubuntu with ESD. (If you don't use Festival with ESD, you will have to disable ESD in the "Sounds" preferences dialog. But in that case, your other multimedia apps won't be able to play audio at the same time.)

Installation

Install Festival (and related files)

$ sudo apt-get install festival

(Additional voices are available in the Ubuntu respositories. Type "festival" in synaptic for a list of packages.)

Install esdplay, which is part of the esound-clients package:

$ sudo apt-get install esound-clients

Configuration

You need to configure festival so that it sends its output through ESD. Otherwise, you'll get the following error when you try to run Festival: "can't open /dev/dsp".

Edit the /etc/festival.scm:

$ sudo gedit /etc/festival.scm

Add the following lines at the end of the file:

(Parameter.set 'Audio_Command "esdplay $FILE") (Parameter.set 'Audio_Method 'Audio_Command) (Parameter.set 'Audio_Required_Format 'snd)

Testing

Test your setup by typing:

$ festival

you'll be presented with a > prompt. Type:

> (SayText "Hello")

The computer should say "hello".

To listen to a text file type:

> (tts FILENAME nil)

FILENAME must be in quote marks.

CategoryDocumentation