This forum has been archived. All content is frozen. Please use KDE Discuss instead.

Akregator natural tts voice?

Tags: None
(comma "," separated)
pemartins
Registered Member
Posts
14
Karma
0

Akregator natural tts voice?

Sat Jun 16, 2018 6:27 pm
Just tested Akregator and love it, congratulations to its developers for a job very well done!

Is there a way of having a natural text-to-speech voice in Akregator? I only have available something called flite in English with kal16 voice but it is an old fashioned robotic voice.
Any chance of something like in naturalreaders?
pemartins
Registered Member
Posts
14
Karma
0
If someone knows how to change the default voice in Akregator please let me know. Meanwhile I built myself a solution that works not only in Akregator but also with every selected text anywhere (I think).

So first of all I found a very good natural female english voice. Run this line in the terminal for installation:
Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install festival festvox-us-slt-hts

source

After, set the installed voice along with festival as the default voice for festival. Make a backup of the file /etc/festival.scm then edit it with kate and add this line to the end of the file:
Code: Select all
(set! voice_default 'voice_cmu_us_slt_arctic_hts)

source
Save it.

Now let's make the reading aloud script. Create the script file to be used in a convenient directory, in example name it "read.sh" and place it in a directory for scripts (mine is in the home folder in a folder called "Scripts").
Open that just created "read.sh" file with kate and copy the following into it:
Code: Select all
#! /bin/bash
xsel | festival --tts --pipe

source
Save it.
Right click the file, choose "Properties", go to "Permissions" tab and check "Is executable" and click "OK".

Now if you select text like in a Firefox webpage or in Akregator and run that "read.sh" script, it will be read out loud.

For convenience you can set a keyboard shortcut to run that "read.sh" file. Go to System Settings > Workspace > Shortcuts > Custom Shortcuts, click on Edit > New > Global Shortcut > Command/URL, give it a name like "Read" or something alike, on the tab "Action" in Command/URL click the folder icon and search for the "read.sh" file.
Now go to the "Trigger" folder and choose a shortcut to be used, click on "None" or in the existing shortcut and enter the key combination you desire. I choose Windows keys plus R.
Click "Apply on the bottom right corner.
source

It's set, just select some text and test it.


Bookmarks



Who is online

Registered users: Bing [Bot], daret, Google [Bot], Sogou [Bot]