How to configure Qtspeech - was configuring speech-dispatcher - festival TTS works!!

[Gustav Degreef]

Hi Folks,

I got festival to work!!  I also posted on the opensuse list, and with
their help and all the input I got here, I have a new voice.  It is an
improvement.  As Simion said, it is only in English, but it is a huge
step for me.  I will eventually try to get other voices to work.

In addition to the below steps, I found out that ESC :wq ENTER is the
right command to exit and save the crontab command I had asked help
with.  After that I used the spd-conf script repeatedly to figure out
what was missing.  In opensuse (Leasp 15) festival needs an additional
package to work -   "festival-freebsoft-utils" . I got it as a tarball from

https://freebsoft.org/festival-freebsoft-utils

The install instructions are in the readme file and were easy to
follow.  Using the spd-conf script then helped me iron out the rest of
the details.

I am very grateful to all of you who gave input in helping me finally solve this.  The sound of the espeak voice never bothered me.  It bothers my partner and recently turned off a very dear friend who first heard it.  It made me realize that it gives a very bad impression of linux.  I am very much encouraged by people's help, and I am going to try to find even bette voices.  In the process of getting festival to work, I saw that the code has essentially not changed in 13 years!  I recently read  an article on the state of the art of linux TTS, it gave me a push to find a voice that sounds more human and gives a better impression to others.  Thanks!  Gustav




On 9/29/19 3:53 PM, Simion wrote:
>
> Hi, crontab command will use your default CLI editor, so is probably
> opening with vim, vim is notorious for beeing imposible to exit from,
>
.....
>
> I can't help with festival
>
> On 9/29/19 10:18 PM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>> Thanks for the explanation.  I get stuck in the same place.  When I run
>> the "crontab -e" command, I get a window where I can past the command
>> specified, but then I don't know how to proceed from there.  I read the
>> man page for crontab and it says that once the commands are specified,
>> you have to exit the editor that is specified (I guess in my system) and
>> then the crontab file becomes active.  I have no idea where to proceed
>> after I past the command into the window. I tried typing exit, Â Â  q and
>> control q but nothing happens.  The menu of the window says to save the
>> output, but when I try that it gives a blank box to type a name to save
>> it to.  Any help would be appreciated.  Some years ago, I was also stuck
>> in this place.  Is there any simple way to make festival an active
>> server?  Gustav.
>>
>> On 9/26/19 10:32 PM, Jeremy Whiting wrote:
>>> Hi Gustav,
>>>
>>> Just out of curiosity, which distribution and version of linux are you
>>> using?
>>>
>>> To answer your question though, crontab is an application that runs
>>> things at different times on a unix based system. crontab -e is a
>>> command to edit the cron table of commands. Running crontab -e and
>>> adding the line you mentioned:
>>>
>>> @restart /usr/bin/festival --server
>>>
>>> will make festival --server run at each boot of the computer I believe.
>>>
>>> Hope that helps. Another possibility according to arch linux's wiki
>>> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Festival#Can't_open_/dev/dsp is
>>> to add some lines to the festival configuration to allow it to open
>>> the /dev/dsp
>>>
>>> BR,
>>> Jeremy
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 7:25 PM Gustav Degreef <gustav97 at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:gustav97 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Hello folks,
>>>
>>>     I edited this thread some to make it easier to follow my current post.
>>>     It is not directed at Simion, though his comments are helpful to
>>>     make my
>>>     post clearer. 
>>>     As a result of these discussions I have more clearly understood
>>>     the role
>>>     of speech-dispatcher.  Since will be used with Qtspeech, it makes
>>>     sense
>>>     to work with it.   So,  Perching with google  I understood how
>>>     central
>>>     speech-dispatcher is to linux TTS.  I tried again to configure
>>>     Festival
>>>     with speech-dispatcher.  I want to try and configure a different
>>>     voice. 
>>>     I wan to try and experiment with different voices.  Espeak is OK,
>>>     but I
>>>     feel I have to move forward.  But again I am stuck.  Here is
>>>     where I am at.
>>>
>>>     I could never get speech output even on the CLI.
>>>
>>>     The error I would get was -festival: can't open /dev/dsp
>>>
>>>     It is due to a bug.   The workaround is:
>>>     Create ~/.festivalrc with the following content
>>>
>>>     ;use ALSA
>>>     (Parameter.set 'Audio_Method 'Audio_Command)
>>>     (Parameter.set 'Audio_Command "aplay -q -c 1 -t raw -f s16 -r $SR
>>>     $FILE")
>>>
>>>
>>>     I then needed to configure speech-dispatcher, so I ran:
>>>
>>>     spd-conf
>>>
>>>     as a regular user.  It creates the speech-dispatcher global server
>>>     configuration file:
>>>
>>>     in ~/.config/speech-dispatcher/|speechd.conf
>>>
>>>     This configures speech-dispatcher (interactively) with a number of
>>>     variables, the default voice is espeak.
>>>
>>>     I then edit speechd.conf, which allows for many different
>>>     voices.  I change:
>>>
>>>     |#AddModule "espeak" "sd_espeak" "espeak.conf"||
>>>     |
>>>     |AddModule "festival" "sd_festival" "festival.conf"|
>>>     |
>>>     |
>>>     |and|
>>>     ||||
>>>
>>>     |#DefaultModule espeak |
>>>
>>>     |DefaultModule festival 
The next step .... "|We  need to run |festival| as a server in order to
make
>>>     |speech-dispatcher| use it as default. We can do that by adding
>>>     the following line at the end of the file that's open when we use the
>>>     command: |sudo crontab -e
>>>
>>>     |@reboot /usr/bin/festival --server
>>>
>>>     |||I can't understand the last step.  I've never used crontab
>>>     fore, any
>>>     help would be appreciated, Gustav.|
>>>     ||
>>>
>>>  
>>>     On 9/22/19 9:29 AM, Simion wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>     snip
>>>
>>>     > As I said I suggest to get used of using faster and faster voices,
>>>     > your family will understand and you will read same texts 2 times
>>>     > faster so you gain time, at that speed any voice will sound robotic,
>>>     > this would not work if you want other to listen with you (but
>>>     you can
>>>     > have a normal speed and a fast speed talker in jovie)
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>     > On 9/22/19 2:54 PM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>>>     >>
>>>     >> snip
>>>     >>
>>>     >>  From what you and others are saying and from what I've
>>>     read, I think I
>>>     >> understand better.  Correct me if I am wrong, but don't
>>>     you have
>>>     >> to tell
>>>     >> speech-dispatcher which voice (e-speak, festival, etc.) to
>>>     use?  If I
>>>     >> can figure out how to tell speech-dispatcher which voice to use
>>>     then
>>>     >> Jovie (or Qtspeech) will then output my choice?  I have
>>>     looked
>>>     >> into it,
>>>     >> and there are several (about 6 different) voices I can use in
>>>     Linux.
>>>     >>