This is a text to speech system produced by integrating various pieces
of code and tables of data, which are all (I believe) in the public domain.
The bulk of the intergration was done by myself, that is Nick Ing-Simmons.
I can be reached via my employer at nik@tiuk.ti.com.
THIS PACKAGE HAS NO CONNECTION WITH TEXAS INSTRUMENTS; IT IS A PRIVATE
PROJECT OF MY OWN.
Despite the E-mail address (which is via TI's US operation) I actually
work in the UK.
Ideally you should have obtained and installed GNU gdbm (I use version 1.7.3).
If you have it but cannot install it see below.
For best quality it is highly desirable to use one of the dictionaries
suggested below.
The package now uses GNU autoconf-2.0 to build a configure script.
The generic install instructions are in INSTALL, but basically
it works like this :
configure
make
make check
say --help
say Something of your choice
make -n install # see what it is going to do
make install # copy program(s) to /usr/local/bin
configure --help and INSTALL file explain configure options
which may help.
To allow the package to be built when installer cannot install the
GNU gdbm package in the "normal" place you can specify a pathname
to the gdbm source directory as follows :
configure --with-gdbm=<path-to-gdbm>
e.g.
configure --with-gdbm=$HOME/gdbm
Currently there are the following drivers:
1. Sun SPARCStations - written & tested by me (nik@tiuk.ti.com)
on SunOS4.1.3 and Solaris2.3
2. Linux - see README.linux
3. NeXT
4. SGI - this builds on "mips-sgi-irix4.0.5H"
see README.sgi for (a bit) more detail.
5. HPUX
6. Any machine for which a nas/netaudio port exists.
And for which configure can find the include files and libraries.
(Nas "net audio server" does for audio what X11 does for graphics
it is available from ftp.x.org:/contrib/audio/nas .)
Dictionaries:
THIS VERSION WILL NOT USE THE SAME DICTIONARY AS PREVIOUS VERSIONS.
The change was to allow at least one dictionary with a non-restrictive
copyright to be used.
Dictionaries convert words in "text" to phonemes in "arpabet"
symbols. The arpabet symbols are then "expanded" into an ASCII
representation of the IPA. The IPA representation is inherited
from the "Computer Usable Version of Oxford Advanced Learners
Dictionary" (CUVOLAD). The CUVOLAD was used directly by previous
releases of rsynth. CUVOLAD is available from Oxford Text Archive.
Dictionary databases can be built from either of two ftp'able
sources:
1. The Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary [cmudict.0.1] is Copyright
1993 by Carnegie Mellon University. Use of this dictionary, for any
research or commercial purpose, is completely unrestricted. If you
make use of or redistribute this material, we would appreciate
acknowlegement of its origin.
ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu:project/fgdata/dict
Latest seems to be cmudict.0.3.Z
2. "beep" from
ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/comp.speech/data
Latest seems to be beep-0.4.tar.gz
This is a direct desendant of CUVOLAD (british pronounciation)
(as used by previous releases of rsynth), and so
has a more restrictive copyright than CMU dictionary.
dict.c looks for bDict.db by default. b is for british e.g. beep
I use aDict.db for CMU (american) dictionary.
You can then :
say -d a schedule # sked...
say -d b schedule # shed...
It is simplest to obtain dictionaries prior to configuring the
package and tell it where the source are at configure time:
configure --with-aDict=../dict/cmudict.0.3 --with-bDict=../dict/beep-0.4
If you have already built/installed the package you can
gdbm from it as follows:
mkdictdb main-dictionary-file bDict.db
mv bDict.db /usr/local/lib
Expect a few messages from mkdictdb about words it does not like
in either dictionary.
It should not be too hard to port it to other hardware. For a discussion of
these issues see PORTING.
Use say --help to get a list of command line options.
SPARCStation-10 can play audio at rates other than 8000Hz, so if -r is
used with an acceptable rate it still plays.
If you have '10 then "man 4 dbri" explains legal rates.
The components (top down ) :
say.c / say.h
C main() function.
Initializes lower layers and then converts words from
command line or "stdin" to phonemes.
Some "normalization" of the text is performed, in particular
numbers can be represented as sequences of digits.
dict.c / dict.h
As of this release uses a GNU "gdbm" database which has been
pre-loaded with a pronounciation dictionary.
text.c / english.c / text.h
An implementation of US Naval Research Laboratory rules
for converting english (american?) text to phonemes.
Based on the version on the comp.speech archives, main changes
were in the encoding of the phonemes from the so called "arpabet"
to a more concise form used in the above dictionary.
This form (which is nmemonic if you know the International Phonetic
Alphabet), is described in the dictionary documentation. It is
also very close to that described in the postings by Evan Kirshenbaum
(evan@hplerk.hpl.hp.com) to sci.lang and alt.usage.english. (The
differences are in the vowels and are probably due to the differences
between Britsh and American english).
saynum.c
Code for "saying" numbers derived from same source as above.
It has been modified to call the higher level routines recursively
rather producing phonemes directly. This will allow any systematic
changes (e.g. British vs American switch) to affect numbers without
having to change this module.
holmes.c / holmes.h / elements.c / elements.def
My implementation of a phoneme to "vocal tract parameters" system
described by Holmes et. al. [1]
The original used an Analogue Hardware synthesizer.
nsynth.c / nsynth.h / def_pars.c
My recoding of the version of the "Klatt" synthesizer, described
in Klatt [2]. I obtained C source code from Jon Iles who had
modified the version originally posted to "comp.speech".
I have extensively re-coded it in my C style as opposed to Klatt's
"original" which showed its FORTRAN ancestry.
In my (non-expert) opinion, the changes are extensive enough
to avoid any copyright on the original.
Only as small subset of the functionality of the synthesizer is
used by the "holmes.c" driver.
hplay.c / hplay.h
hplay.h describes a common interface.
hplay.c is a link to play/xxxplay.c
Acknowledgements :
Particular thanks to
Tony Robinson ajr@eng.cam.ac.uk
for providing FTP site for alpha testing, and telnet access to a
variety of machines.
Many thanks to
Axel Belinfante Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl (World Wide Web)
Jon Iles J.P.Iles@cs.bham.ac.uk
Rob Hooft hooft@EMBL-Heidelberg.de (linux stuff)
Thierry Excoffier exco@ligiahp3.univ-lyon1.fr (playpipe for hpux)
Markus Gyger mgyger@itr.ch (HPUX port)
Ben Stuyts ben@stuyts.nl (NeXT port)
Stephen Hocking <sysseh@devetir.qld.gov.au> (Preliminary Netaudio port)
Greg Renda <greg@ncd.com> (Netaudio cleanup)
Tracey Bernath <bernath@bnr.ca> (Netaudio testing)
"Tom Benoist" <ben@ifx.com> (SGI Port)
Andrew Anselmo <anselmo@ERXSG.rl.plh.af.mil> (SGI testing)
Mark Hanning-Lee <markhl@iris-355.jpl.nasa.gov> (SGI testing)
for assisting me in puting this package together.
References :
[1] Holmes J. N., Mattingly I, and Shearme J. (1964)
"Speech Synthesis by Rule" , Language Speech 7, 127-143
[2] Dennis H. Klatt (1980)
"Software for a Cascade/Parallel Formant Synthesizer",
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 67(3), March 1980.
Sources :
OXFORD TEXT ARCHIVE
The Oxford Text Archive has for several years maintained copies of several
machine-readable dictionaries along with its extensive (if
unsystematic) collections of other machine-readable texts. This document
gives some further details of the various dictionaries available, and
summarises the conditions under which copies of them are currently
distributed.
The Oxford Text Archive Shortlist (available on request via electronic
mail and by FTP) gives up to date brief details of all texts held in
the Archive. Send electronic mail to ARCHIVE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK. For
anonymous FTP, look in the directory ota on ota.ox.ac.uk (129.67.1.165)
Internet newsgroups :
comp.speech and its archive on svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk
(Many of starting point sources).
sci.lang
(For ASCII IPA)
{\rtf0\ansi{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss Helvetica;\f1\fmodern Courier;\f2\fmodern Ohlfs;\f3\ftech Symbol;}
\paperw8920
\paperh9800
\margl680
\margr780
{\colortbl;\red17\green0\blue153;\red68\green85\blue255;\red0\green0\blue0;}
\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 Contents: Other Documents:\
\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
{{\NeXTHelpLink34 \markername ;\linkFilename README.NeXT;\linkMarkername introduction;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 Introduction
{{\NeXTHelpLink54 \markername ;\linkFilename README;\linkMarkername ;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 README\
{{\NeXTHelpLink63 \markername ;\linkFilename README.NeXT;\linkMarkername gettingstarted;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 Getting started
{{\NeXTHelpLink86 \markername ;\linkFilename INSTALL;\linkMarkername ;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 INSTALL\
{{\NeXTHelpLink96 \markername ;\linkFilename README.NeXT;\linkMarkername asummary;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 A summary
{{\NeXTHelpLink113 \markername ;\linkFilename Changes;\linkMarkername ;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 Changes\
{{\NeXTHelpLink123 \markername ;\linkFilename README.NeXT;\linkMarkername dictionary;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 Dictionary \
{{\NeXTHelpLink143 \markername ;\linkFilename README.NeXT;\linkMarkername services;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 Services\
{{\NeXTHelpLink154 \markername ;\linkFilename README.NeXT;\linkMarkername knownbugs;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 Known bugs\
{{\NeXTHelpLink167 \markername ;\linkFilename README.NeXT;\linkMarkername history;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 History\
\b0\gray386\fc2\cf2 _____________________________________________________\
\b\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
{\gray85\fc1\cf1{\NeXTHelpMarker232 \markername introduction;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 Introduction\
\b0\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
This is a text to speech system produced by integrating various pieces of code and tables of data, which are all (I believe) in the public domain.\
\
The bulk of the integration was done by Nick Ing-Simmons. See the file README for more info.\
\
The port to the NeXT was done by Ben Stuyts. (ben@stuyts.nl -- NeXT Mail Welcome.) I have only tested this on black hardware with NEXTSTEP 3.2.\
\gray386\fc2\cf2 _____________________________________________________\
\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
{\b\gray85\fc1\cf1{\NeXTHelpMarker688 \markername gettingstarted;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 Getting started\
\b0\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
\pard\tx960\tx1920\tx2880\tx3840\tx4800\tx5760\tx6720\tx7680\tx8640\tx9600\fc0\cf0 Make sure you have the GNU dbm library installed. I have tested it with gdbm-v1.7.3.\
\
\fc3\cf3 Then type:\
\
\f1 rm -f hplay.c\
ln -s play/NeXTplay.c hplay.c\
make -f makefile.next\
\f0 \
Test the result by typing:\
\
./
\f1 say Welcome to the NeXT world\
\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\gray386\fc2\cf2 _____________________________________________________\
\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
{\b\gray85\fc1\cf1{\NeXTHelpMarker990 \markername asummary;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 A summary\
\b0\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
\li540 Command line options:\
-v verbose\
\pard\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\fi-2660\li3200\fc0\cf0 -r # set the sampling rate in Hz. Default is 8 KHz.\
-q turns off warnings\
-I Impulsive source (default is "NATURAL")\
-c num-cascade Switches to CASCADE_PARALLEL with number of cascaded formants\
-F number f0_flutter value\
-f mSec-per-frame Sets frame length\
-t number voicing spectral tilt in dB, 0 to 24\
-x freq voicing fundamentel frequency\
-p file file to save holmes parameters to.\
-S number speed, default =1, larger means slower\
-K number umm...\
\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\li540\fc0\cf0 \
say "words words and more words".\
say "[phonemes]".\
say < file\
\
say\
type words from stdin. A dot end a sentence and starts the conversion.\
\li0 \
Don't expect too much speed: on my 25 MHz cube the generation of 8 KHz speech takes as long as the speech itself. The bottleneck seems to be in nsynth.c, where most of the computation is done in floating point.\
\gray386\fc2\cf2 _____________________________________________________\
\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
{\b\gray85\fc1\cf1{\NeXTHelpMarker1939 \markername dictionary;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 Dictionary\
\b0\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
You can get an optional pronunciation dictionary. See file README
{{\NeXTHelpLink2017 \markername ;\linkFilename README;\linkMarkername ;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b0\i0\ulnone\fs24\fc0\cf0 , section "Dictionaries" for details.\
\gray386\fc2\cf2 _____________________________________________________\
\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
{\b\gray85\fc1\cf1{\NeXTHelpMarker2111 \markername services;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 Services\
\b0\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
Here's a Tickle-service you can use to say any text.:\
\
\f2\fs20\li540 # Begin TickleServices Version 1.01 Data\
"Menu Item" = "Tickle Services/Say";\
"Send Type" = "NXAsciiPboardType";\
"Tcl" = "\\\
# Speak the selection\
\
exec say << [pasteboard read]\
";\
# End TickleServices Data\
\f0\fs24\li0\gray386\fc2\cf2 _____________________________________________________\
\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
{\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\b\gray85\fc1\cf1{\NeXTHelpMarker2438 \markername knownbugs;}
¬}\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 Known bugs\
\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\b0\fc0\cf0 \
\pard\tx480\tx960\tx1440\tx1920\tx2400\tx2880\tx3360\tx3840\tx4320\tx4800\f3\fi-480\li480\fc0\cf0 ·
\f0 A fixed size buffer is used (in hplay.c) as a sound buffer. It is 1 MB, so you probably won't notice it. It might dump core on you though: This happens if you give it a very long sentence, and/or a high sample rate.\
\f3 ·
\f0 It doesn't compile straight away on NEXTSTEP 3.0 systems. The compiler gives errors like:\
\f2\fs20\fi-1540\li2500\fc3\cf3 cc -O2 -finline-functions -Wall -c holmes.c\
holmes.c: In function `filter':\
holmes.c:47: argument `v' doesn't match function prototype\
holmes.c:47: a formal parameter type that promotes to `double' can match only `double' in the prototype\
\f0\fs24\fi0\li480 To circumvent this, change the affected functions from:\
\f2\fs20\fi480 static float\
filter(p, v)\
filter_ptr p;\
float v;\
\f0\fs24\fi0 To:\
\f2\fs20\fi480 static float\
filter(filter_ptr p, float v)\
\pard\tx520\tx1060\tx1600\tx2120\tx2660\tx3200\tx3720\tx4260\tx4800\tx5320\f0\fs24\gray386\fc2\cf2 _____________________________________________________\
\pard\tx960\tx1920\tx2880\tx3840\tx4800\tx5760\tx6720\tx7680\tx8640\tx9600\fc0\cf0 \
{\b\gray85\fc1\cf1{\NeXTHelpMarker3207 \markername history;}
¬}\pard\tx960\tx1920\tx2880\tx3840\tx4800\tx5760\tx6720\tx7680\tx8640\tx9600\f0\b\i0\ulnone\fs24\gray85\fc1\cf1 History\
\b0\gray0\fc0\cf0 \
22-feb-94 Ben Stuyts Initial port to NeXT.\
\fi-3840\li3840 05-mar-94 Ben Stuyts Added 3.0 fix to known bugs section.\
\fc3\cf3 06-mar-94 Ben Stuyts Fixed byte-ordering problem for Intel systems. Thanks to ugubser@avalon.unizh.ch for finding this out.\
\fi0\li0\fc0\cf0 20-sep-94 Ben Stuyts Updates for rsynth 1.0 release.\
}
To: Nick Ing-Simmons <nicki@lobby.ti.com>
Subject: rsynth (in WWW)
From: Axel Belinfante <Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl>
Organisation: University of Twente, Dept of Informatics,
Tele Informatics Group, PO Box 217,
NL-7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 53 89 3774
Telefax: +31 53 333815
X-Face: 3YGZY^_!}k]>-k'9$LK?8GXbi?vs=2v*ut,/8z,z!(QNBk_>~:~"MJ_%i`sLLqGN,DGbkT@
N\jhX/jNLTz2hO_R"*RF(%bRvk+M,iU7SvVJtC*\B6Ud<7~`MGMp7rCI6LVp=%k=HE?-UCV?[p\$R?
mI\n2/!#3/wZZsa[m7d;PKWiuH6'~<x[UoHs%Ei=QZA
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 19:16:22 +0100
Sender: belinfan@cs.utwente.nl
Hi,
as you may have noticed, i integrated your rsynth program (v 0.9) into
the World Wide Web, as it seems the best publicly available TTS
translator for a unix environment.
While doing so, i noticed that if rsynth is installed _without_ a
dictionary file, then it can get into an endless loop when it is trying
to spell something.
To integrate it, i made a few modifications, as i wanted rsynth
to write soundbytes to stdout, and diagnostics to stderr:
- i had to comment out some code that tries to get the device output
encoding configuration
- i added a `-' filename flag, to indicate stdout output of sound bytes,
- i made sure that all diagnostics go to stderr
- the code that writes the audio header now first writes an 'unknown size',
and then tries to overwrite it with the correct size, instead of
initially writing a size of zero bytes. to avoid 'corrup' audio headers.
Regards,
Axel.
<Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl> tel. +31 53 893774 fax. +31 53 333815
University of Twente, Tele-Informatics & Open Systems Group
P.O. Box 217 NL-7500 AE Enschede The Netherlands
"ili ne sciis ke estas neebla do ili simple faris" -- Loesje
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.