[Announce] Speech Dispatcher IBM TTS Output Module ready for testing

[Gary Cramblitt]

A new output module in Speech Dispatcher is ready for user testing.  The 
ibmtts output module uses the commercial IBM TTS synthesizer for Linux and 
offers the following capabilities:

1.  Support for all the documented dialects and voices of IBM TTS, plus custom 
voices via the ibmtts.conf file.

2.  Support for spelling mode.

3.  Support for changing volume, pitch, rate, etc.

4.  Support for Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) (as far as IBM TTS 
supports it).

5.  Support for index marking, including SSML <mark> tags.

6.  Support for pronouncing all the Speech Dispatcher KEY commands (English, 
but can be customized via the ibmtts.conf file).

7.  Support for all the characters in the Latin-1 charset (English, but can be 
customized via the ibmtts.conf file).

8.  Support for sound icons via separate .wav files.

In order to test the new ibmtts output module, you will need:

1.  A copy of the commercial IBM TTS synthesizer for Linux.  More information 
available at http://ibmtts-sdk.sourceforge.net/

2.  Ability to download and build Speech Dispatcher from CVS.  More info at 
http://www.freebsoft.org/speechd

I'm interested in feedback on any compile/build problems that users might have 
as well as usability.  If anyone develops enhancements for the ibmtts.conf 
file for other languages, please send them to me.

If you do not have a copy of the IBM TTS synthesizer itself, you can still 
test building of the ibmtts output module by downloading the IBM TTS Software 
Development Kit (SDK), which is available at the SourceForge link given 
above.  You must retrieve the SDK using SourceForge CVS.  See 
README.packagers file in the Speech Dispatcher source.  Without the actual 
synthesizer, you won't hear anything, of course.  The SDK (not the 
synthesizer) is licensed under a BSD-style license.

In addition, the latest CVS version of Speech Dispatcher includes a few 
enhancements, including

1.  Updated documentation.

2.  An --ssml option for spd-say for speaking SSML.

3.  A --pipe-mode option for spd-say that permits inserting spd-say into a 
Unix stdin/stdout pipe.  See the spd-say manual for more information.

4.  Additional test scripts in the src/tests directory.

5.  Enhanced espeak-generic.conf file for use with ESpeak.

The Speech Dispatcher project provides a device independent layer for speech 
synthesis through a simple, stable and well documented interface. It takes 
care of most of the tasks necessary to solve in speech enabled applications. 
What is a very high level GUI library to graphics, Speech Dispatcher is to 
speech synthesis.  Speech Dispatcher provides excellent support for the Free 
Festival speech synthesizer, as well as Festival Lite (flite), ESpeak (via 
generic module), Epos, DecTalk, Apollo, llia, and (now) IBM TTS.

-- 
Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)