Configuring Synthesis Plugins (Talkers)
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Configuring Synthesis Plugins (Talkers)

Most text-to-speech (TTS) synthesizers offer multiple languages and voices and may offer multiple speaking genders, volumes, and rates. You may configure more than one instance of a synthesizer. Each combination of language, synthesizer, voice, gender, volume, and rate is called a talker. You must configure at least one talker before you can start KTTS and begin speaking text.

Note

Multiple talkers for the same synthesizer is similar to multiple print queues for a single physical printer.

When applications send text to KTTS, they may specify the attributes of the preferred talker to do the synthesis. For example, an application may request an English language female talker. If you have configured a talker with both the English language and female gender, that talker will be used, otherwise the closest matching talker will be automatically picked. To learn more about how KTTS picks talkers, see the section called “Filters (Advanced)”.

When you click the Talkers tab in kttsmgr, the Talkers screen appears. This screen also automatically appears if you start kttsmgr and you have not yet configured any talkers.


The KDE Text-to-Speech Manager (Talkers tab)

1

Click to add a new talker.

2

All the configured Talkers are listed here. Highest priority Talkers are listed at the top. The top-most talker will be used to do the speaking when an application does not specify a talker.

3

Click on a talker in the list to highlight it and click this button to remove it.

4

Click on a talker in the list to highlight it and click this button to display the synthesis plugin's configuration dialog. See below.

5

Click on a talker in the list to highlight it and click this button to move it down one row in the list. The lower a talker appears in the list, the lower its priority.

6

Click one of these buttons to apply the changes you have made to the running KTTS system.

When you click the Add button, the Add Talker screen appears.


Add Talker screen

1

You can select a speech synthesis plugin by either Synthesizer name, or by the Language the synthesizer can speak. Check the radio button next to the corresponding box. When the Language radio button is checked, the Language box displays all the languages supported by all available synthesizers, and the Synthesizer box displays only those synthesizers that support the chosen language. When the Synthesizer radio button is checked, the Synthesizer box displays all available synthesizers, and the Language box displays only the languages supported by the chosen synthesizer.

2

Choose the language and synthesizer plugin here.

3

When you click here, most synthesizer plugins will automatically configure themselves, choosing a default setup. A new talker will appear in the list in the Talkers screen. Click the Edit button to display or edit the talker's configuration.

When you click the Add button on the Talkers tab and add a talker that cannot automatically configure itself, or click the Edit button, the Talker Configuration screen appears. Each speech synthesis plugin has a different Talker Configuration screen. The following is an example for configuring the Festival Interactive plugin. For specifics for each kind of plugin, see the section called “Configuration”.


Talker Configuration

1

Specify the path to the Festival executable program. If Festival is in your PATH environment variable, just enter festival.

2

Click to scan for available voices.

3

Select a voice.

4

Select a character encoding for text sent to Festival. For voices that are known to KTTS, this setting will be picked for you automatically. In general, western languages use ISO 8859-1. Eastern European languages such as Czech or Slovak use ISO 8859-2.

5

Click to test. You should hear a test sentence spoken.

6

Use these controls to set the volume, talking speed, and pitch (tone) of the synthesized speech. If any of these are disabled (grayed), the chosen voice does not support changing them.

7

Some voices, such as the MultiSyn voices, are so large that they require several seconds to load. Checking this box will cause them to be loaded when KTTSD is started, thereby saving time (at the expense of using more memory) before the first sentence is synthesized.

Click the OK button to save the talker configuration settings.

Warning

Be sure to click the Apply button, otherwise your changes will not take effect in the running KTTS system.

Assuming the test worked, you are almost ready to begin using KTTS. Now go back to the General tab and check the Enable Text-to-Speech System (KTTSD) box. This will start the KDE TTS Daemon. See the section called “Starting KTTSD and Setting General Options”. You may now begin using KTTS to speak text. Click the Jobs tab to create and manage text jobs. See the section called “Managing Text Jobs”.

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