Read Text 0.8.58

All Platforms

Bug fixes and performance improvements. Works on legacy i386 32 bit systems.

LibreOffice 7.4.0.3 could only save audio files into an existing directory using Windows 10, but now it can create a new directory.
The extension can read using Windows XP 32 bit.

New versions of MacOS that use python3 can use python to read text aloud and save audio files instead of Apple osascript. You can check the version of python on your MacOS computer by opening a terminal and typing python3 --version.
The computer will switch to python if it cannot find a working version of osascript, but you can enable python manually by entering /usr/bin/python3 in the External Program field of Read Text Extension's main menu.
Python 3 saves compressed audio files more quickly because it uses afconvert to convert audio files instead of a Music or iTunes desktop application.

32 bit Linux Open Desktop systems like Debian 11.4.0-i386 and Linux Mint Mate 19.3 32 bit can read text aloud without installing additional software.
Rhvoice installs voices into the system festival voice directory, but the festival program cannot use some of them. The rhvoice voices are disabled if you choose festival as your speech synthesiser.
The Ubuntu 22.04 LTS version of python3-gtts is not the latest, and it did not work during testing. You can try the latest version of the python 3 gtts library using pip3 install gTTS. The extension does not show the dialog menu item unless a compatible version is installed locally.