Gespeaker is a project realized with Python and PyGTK libraries which allows the system to speak and read a written text or loaded from an external file.
This is a nice interface for espeak system that will be automatically installed if not present.
Its use is fairly simple, just to enter the text to listen or load it from an external file using the Open button and press the Play button to listen.
It’s possible to change various parameters such as pitch, volume, speed reading and gap between a word and the next. Also speaking language and male or female voice can be chosen.
It’s designed for multilingual environments, so that if you run on a system with Italian language the user interface will be shown in Italian, on a system with english language the user interface will be in english. The system is opened to various localizations, it’s just needed the corresponding language file.
Since version 0.5 the system will be able to record the audio track in WAV format, as well it’s possibile save the user preferences.
Important news: since version 0.6 is allowed the use of the mbrola voices for more realistic speech experience. Please look at the new version 0.6 page (italian only sorry).
Please help me with suggestions to enhance Gespeaker or to translate it in other languages. 
Package is available from the Ubuntu Trucchi repository or this page or this project hosted in Google Code. Download of the last available version is recommended.
15 Giugno 2009 alle 18:07 |
Hi! Great work, I’m loving it.
Two petitions here:
-When you insert a long text, could Gespeaker break it into lines instead of using one huge line?
-Also, would it be possible to stop the voice when you press the “play” button again? I played a very long text by mistake, in the wrong language, and pressed “play” again to stop it, only to see how TWO voices now were speaking it. It didn’t even stop when I closed Gespeaker.
15 Giugno 2009 alle 18:34 |
Hello David, thank you for the interest
I like the idea for multiple lines to play, like a queue of playings.
The stop feature will be implemented very soon, almost everyone asked for it. I was just thinking about the best way to implement this
15 Giugno 2009 alle 18:08 |
Oh, also.
-Would it be possible to apply the settings “on the fly”, even in the middle of a reading, instead of having to start over again?
15 Giugno 2009 alle 18:36 |
this one instead would be a very difficult issue
gespeaker is just a frontend for espeak but I don’t think there’s a way to know what word espeak is going to play.
I’ll look on espeak documentation but I doubt there’s a way
16 Giugno 2009 alle 6:59
Dear Mr. In this case, could you add a button “demo play” that plays a demo sentence. The user can test setting, and once he is happy, press the normal play button. If you are interested by this idea, I suppose that a user will ask you a way to personalize the demo text, and another a text that automatically switches between language according to the speak setting.
(I has never tried your software, but seems interesting project, good luck).
16 Giugno 2009 alle 14:24 |
thanks for the idea FabriceV
it could be useful for testing
15 Luglio 2009 alle 6:25 |
It would be nice if your program could be made to play whatever is on the clipboard at a given time (whatever the currently selected text is). Maybe having a gnome-hotkey which makes the selected text to be spoken would be nice, so you don’t have to switch applications.
15 Luglio 2009 alle 13:39 |
the paste and play could be a feature for next version
but a global keybinding would require a gnome dependency and that’s not on my plans
gespeaker wants to be fully compatible with every gtk environment so it will not have any gnome dependency
30 Luglio 2009 alle 20:58 |
Please upload to the repositories mbrola-mx1 & mbrola-mx2… thanks…
30 Luglio 2009 alle 21:10 |
i cannot do it because espeak won’t support those voices, so mbrola would be useless
30 Ottobre 2009 alle 20:35 |
Thank you.
I love this one because of its simplicity.