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 by typing the following command in a Terminal:

sudo apt-get install festival

Note: Additional voices are available in the Ubuntu respositories. Type "festival" in Synaptic Package Manager 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 will get a can't open /dev/dsp error when you try to run Festival.

1. Open the file /etc/festival.scm by typing gksudo gedit /etc/festival.scm in a Terminal.

2. 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)}}}

3. Save the file.

Testing

1. Test your setup by typing festival in a Terminal.

2. You will be presented with a > prompt. Type > (Say``Text "Hello".

3. The computer should say "hello".

4. To listen to a text file type > (tts "FILENAME" nil). FILENAME must be in quote marks.