Text to speech? (fwd)

[Hans Zoebelein <zocki goldfish cube net>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 00:09:32 -0700 (MST)
From: "Marc E. Christensen" <marc ssv1 union utah edu>
To: linux-access ssv1 union utah edu
Subject: Text to speech?


I have been wondering for a while now if there is a text to speech suite 
of programs avaliable for Linux.  Our office is currently using 
Arkenstone's Open Book Unbound under MS Windows for our student's texts.  
I've always thought it would be nice to have the capability to do the 
same under Linux.  

I think that all that would be needed is some scripts to combine software
already avalible.  These could all be run from within emacspeak.  Sofar
the software list needs to contain a scanning program capable of batch
mode scanning, and collation ( I think that both of these things can just
be functions that are preformed by the scripts); a quality OCR package; a 
text reader which can read continuously from a list of files (or just one 
large combined file).

I think that every thing exists for this - Tummy Software has xv-scan (I 
think that's right), emacspeak can preform the reading easily enough and 
there are a couple of OCR packages.  The only problem is that I have not 
heard of any success using the OCR packages.

As another feature I think it would be cool if bookmarks could be kept so 
that when reading a long book, one could immediately return to where they 
had left off at the end of the last reading.

Has anyone else had success doing any text to speech under Linux or know 
if any one else has been thinking along these lines?

Now that school has picked up again after the Christmas holidays I can't
think about anything else but school work so it looks like summer is the
only time I would be able to start on something like this.  Anyone else is
welcome to run with it if they want.  We can provide ftp space if needed. 

	Just a thought.

--
Marc Christensen
SysOp CDSS University of Utah
http://ssv1.union.utah.edu