IBMTTS on slackware

[Nick Stockton]

I know it's doable because I helped a friend set up their copy of ttsynth on 
their slackware box a while back.
I forget if it was slackware version 11 or 12 but I think the process would 
be the same for eather one.
I've not ever seen any instructions on the speakup list on how to do it so 
I'll write down what I did here.
Lucky for you I saved the commands I enterd to a text file so I'd know how 
it was done although I'm using voxin which I got for $5 and am running it 
under debian.
Note: this is for ttsynth under slackware. Voxin would be quite alot harder 
to get working under slackware so you better get ttsynth.
I've also prepended the commands with '$ ' in case my email client tries to 
wrap commands to the next line. So you'll be able to see where each line 
begins.
You will need to run all the commands as root. You also need to have alien 
installed.
If you don't want to find, download, compile and install alien and all the 
dependencies from source to your copy of slackware then you might want to 
download GRML and use it only to run the alien commands.
--------------------
$ wget 
http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gcc-2.95/libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_2.95.4-27_i386.deb
$ alien -t -c -k libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_2.95.4-27_i386.deb
$ installpkg libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2-2.95.4.tgz
$ ldconfig
$ alien -t -c -k ttsynthcore-1.0-i386.deb
$ installpkg ttsynthcore-1.0.tgz
$ ln -s /opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/enu50.so /usr/lib/enu50.so
$ ln -s /opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/enumfilt.so /usr/lib/enumfilt.so
$ ln -s /opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/ssmlfilter.so /usr/lib/ssmlfilter.so
$ cp /opt/IBM/ibmtts/inc/* /usr/include/
$ ldconfig
$ I know it's doable because I helped a friend set up their copy of ttsynth 
on their slackware box.
I forget if it was slackware version 11 or 12 but I think the process would 
be the same for eather one.
I've not ever seen any instructions on the speakup list on how to do it so 
I'll write down what I did here.
Lucky for you I saved the commands I enterd to a text file so I'd know how 
it was done although I'm using voxin which I got for $5 and am running it 
under debian.
Note: this is for ttsynth under slackware. Voxin would be quite alot harder 
to get working under slackware so you better get ttsynth.
I've also prepended the commands with '$ ' in case my email client tries to 
wrap commands to the next line. So you'll be able to see where each line 
begins.
You will need to run all the commands as root. You also need to have alien 
installed.
If you don't want to find, download, compile and install alien and all the 
dependencies from source to your copy of slackware then you might want to 
download GRML and use it to run the alien commands.
--------------------
$ wget 
http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gcc-2.95/libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_2.95.4-27_i386.deb
$ alien -t -c -k libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_2.95.4-27_i386.deb
$ installpkg libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2-2.95.4.tgz
$ ldconfig
$ alien -t -c -k ttsynthcore-1.0-i386.deb
$ installpkg ttsynthcore-1.0.tgz
$ ln -s /opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/enu50.so /usr/lib/enu50.so
$ ln -s /opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/enumfilt.so /usr/lib/enumfilt.so
$ ln -s /opt/IBM/ibmtts/lib/ssmlfilter.so /usr/lib/ssmlfilter.so
$ cp /opt/IBM/ibmtts/inc/* /usr/include/
$ ldconfig
$ mknod /dev/softsynth c 10 26
--------------------
Hope this helps.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 3:33 PM
Subject: IBMTTS on slackware


> Hello,
> I know this has come up before, but I can't remember any actual final
> conclusion.
>
> Whilst I thought espeak was fast enough, I found I had to use a windows
> machine last week, and it reminded me how I do actually use eloquence in
> windows faster than I have espeak. This has got me thinking whether I
> should get IBMTTS for linux, but I have a few questions.
>
> I know that IBMTTS requires an old compatibility library, which I am
> unsure is provided in slackware. So how could I go about trying to get
> this library? Does anyone know of a suitable slackware package for it?
> If not how might I go about providing this myself from source (I had a
> look around for the source code I might need, but all libstdc++ seems to
> have numbers such as 6.0.x etc much highrt than what the TTSynth site
> suggests, 2.9.6 or 2.9.5). Could it be possible to use a package from a
> different distribution, eg. I remember back in the days when I used
> trplayer, I could use rpm2tgz to convert the realplayer 8 package into a
> slackware package and it worked fine, but I suspect that for libstdc++
> compatibility libraries things may not be so simple.
>
> This brings me on to another question, whether to use voxin or ttsynth?
> The ttsynth website says there won't be any support provided, so I guess
> this means if I buy ttsynth and can't get it working then I am on my own
> and may have wasted money on it. Might things be better with voxin,
> their website says that voxin includes the libstdc++ compatibility
> library (I guess for debian or ubuntu as those are the distros
> mentioned).
>
> Alternatively I am wondering whether it would be best save the money and
> stick with espeak as it is good and works, where as ibmtts sounds like I
> may hit all sorts of compatibility issues and potentially have no
> support from the seller.
>
> Michael Whapples
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup