Mbrola-server for Emacspeak

[Rhandeev Singh <rhandeev@comp.nus.edu.sg>]

I don't know if this will come in useful to somebody in the education
business, but I've got a hunch that talking computers will make learning
just a little more fun :)

Also, you might want to try the festival text-to-speech system.  I've
configured festival to use mbrola for the synthesis part.  I've been using
it to read web pages (via lynx) and some ASCII documents to me for about
two years and it works great. 

See the Repository at http://www.leb.net/blinux for more speech stuff.

---
Rhandeev Singh                      http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~rhandeev
Linux User Group                    http://linux.comp.nus.edu.sg
National University of Singapore

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 13:23:32 +0100 (CET)
From: Hans Zoebelein <hzo@goldfish.cube.net>
To: mbrola-interest@tcts.fpms.ac.be
Subject: Mbrola-server for Emacspeak now as RPM package.
Resent-Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 14:28:06 +0100
Resent-From: mbrola-interest@tcts.fpms.ac.be

Hi,

the MBROLA server which speaks output from the speech enabled user
interface EMACSPEAK using MBROLA, is now available as RPM package.
(Ann.: Emcspeak was featured by CBS radio yesterday. You can hear 
it at http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman/emacspeak/OsgoodFile.au)  

RPM makes it much easier to install a speaking interface for the user
who is blind. One command for each package and you are ready to go.

MBROLA server allows you to run the famous speech enabled EMACSPEAKk user
environment without a dedicated hardware speech synthesizer. Your stock
sound card is enough to get high quality speech output. 
Speech output is provided by MBROLA software synthesizer which is also
available at the Blinux File Archive. I recommend a processor somewhat 
faster than a 486DX100 (which I'm running:). A friend of mine
runs EMACSPEAK on his 400 Pentium and speech response is lightning fast.

What files do you need to run EMACSPEAK?
You'll need an installed Emacs. This should come with your Linux
distribution. If not, you'll look for two packages on the Internet: 
emacs-* (the core files) and
emacs-X11-* this is an Emacs which has support for X11 built in.  

If your Linux installation can handle RPM packages you'll download from
the Blinux file archive. All packages should install at the right
places and interact with each other smoothly:
1) The EMCASPEAK package:
http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/emacspeak/blinux/emacspeak-9.0-2.noarch.rpm
2) The MBROLA Synthesizer binary:
http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/mbrola/blinux/RPMS/mbrola-3.01g1-1.i386.rpm  
3) The English MBROLA voice file en1:
http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/mbrola/blinux/RPMS/mbrola-en1-2.0-1.i386.rpm 
4) The MBROLA Server which redirects EMCASPEAK output to MBROLA:
http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/emacspeak/blinux/mbrola_server/mbrola_server-1.3.1-1.i386.rpm

If you cannot handle RPM packages you'll download the corresponding tar
archives. You'll have to take care that files go to the right places:
1) The EMCASPEAK package as gzipped tar archive which has to be compiled: 
http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/emacspeak/cornell.mirror/emacspeak-9.0.tgz
2) The MBROLA Synthesizer binary:
http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/mbrola/tcts.mirror/mbr301g1.zip
3) The English MBROLA voice file en1: 
http://www.leb.net.mirror/pub/blinux/mbrola/tcts.mirror/VOICES/en1/en1-980910.zip 
4) The MBROLA Server which redirects EMCASPEAK output to MBROLA:
http://www.leb.net/pub/blinux/emacspeak/blinux/mbrola_server/mbrola_server_1.3.1.tar.gz

Enjoy!
Hans

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