[Kde-accessibility] kttsd and KSayIt etc...

[Gary Cramblitt]

Robert, I encourage you to adapt KSayIt to kttsd and second all comments
by Pupeno and Bill.

Something that is missing from KDE right now is the ability to speak
long text files, such as e-books, with the ability to control speaking. 
This is not just an accessibility capability, but a new capability not
currently available.  The ideal client would permit user to:

1.  Open a text file and begin speaking. 

2.  Pause or Stop speaking. 

3.  Remember (bookmark) current place in a file for restart at a later time.

4.  Adjust speed and volume while speeking. 

5.  Highlight text on-screen as it is spoken. 

6.  Backup by word, sentence, or paragraph.

7.  Filter architecture for converting files in other formats to text. 
For example, HTMLtoTXT, PDBtoTXT, etc.

8.  KPart or Service that it is available from Konqueror.

I wrote something like this in Python (see storytalker.sourceforge.net).

(Note: It is possible to get Festival to convert a text file to a wav
file and then play it in any media player.  The trouble with this
approach is 1) it takes a long time and a lot of disk space to produce
the wav file from a large text file, and 2) it is not possible to bookmark 
play and come back later for restart.)

You should be aware that QT4 will offer additional accessibility
enhancements that might impact kttsd.  I don't have details.

If you decide to adapt KSayIt to kttsd, I'd like to help out.  E-mail me.

Regards,
Gary Cramblitt