Post date: May 14, 2015 11:58:23 PM

This release adds features for Linux. Windows and OSX features are unchanged.

Linux features

• • Set the rate and pitch for espeak and festival speech synthesizers from the main dialogue.

  • Linux documentation in the “About” dialogue is updated.

Changing the speech rate in Linux

How do you change the speech rate in the Read Text Extension in LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice in Linux?

• • The newest version of the extension puts rate and pitch options in the main dialogue. Choose Tools - Add-ons - Read Selection... then click and hold Command line options to choose an option.

  • Not all Linux voices support changing the speech rate or pitch.

  • Read Text supports changing the pitch or rate for espeak, festival and pico voice engines. If you use a different speech synthesis engine you might try writing a script or adapting an existing script.

Using Espeak with older versions of the extension

If you can't install the most recent version of the extension, you can easily change the parameters of espeak by specifying the program and options to use in the main dialogue. For example, to use espeak with a specific voice and rate, enter the path to the program in the External Program box:

/usr/bin/espeak

Once you have entered the program path, enter or choose the specific commands you need in the Command line options box:

-b 1 -p 50 -s 120 -v en-us -f "(TMP)"

The b 1 argument means use UTF-8 encoding. The -p argument changes the pitch. The -s argument changes the rate. The -v argument changes the voice. The -f argument specifies the path of the file to read. The extension replaces the "(TMP)" token with the path to the temporary plain text file to read aloud. Read the espeak manual pages for more examples of espeak command arguments.