chris@attain.teradyne.com (Chris Maslyar) (02/05/91)
I'm looking for a text-to-speech converter for an IBM PC/AT. Such a program would take text from either the keyboard or a file, apply a few phoneme rules, and produce output through the PC's speaker (I'm not looking for quality). I know that the Mac has several such programs. In fact even my old Apple II+ sports these abilities. I figure there has to be at least one text-speech program for the IBM?!?! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Chris
heffron@falstaff.css.beckman.com (Matt Heffron) (02/06/91)
In <9840@certes.attain.teradyne.com> chris@attain.teradyne.com (Chris Maslyar) writes: > I'm looking for a text-to-speech converter for an IBM PC/AT. Such a > program would take text from either the keyboard or a file, apply a > few phoneme rules, and produce output through the PC's speaker (I'm not > looking for quality). I know that the Mac has several such programs. > In fact even my old Apple II+ sports these abilities. I figure there > has to be at least one text-speech program for the IBM?!?! I have a program which I think I got from CompuServe (in Sept '88) which does this. The program has no apparent copyright (except as a string in the .exe file which isn't displayed when the program is run). I'm appending the .DOC file below, as it includes the author's snail-mail address (as of 9/88). I'll think about posting the object (I don't have source) to c.b.i.p -Matt Heffron =====================================cut here================================== TRAN TRAN is a text-to-speech program for the IBM-PC. It can read ASCII text files, translate normal English spelling to phonemes, and sound out each phoneme through the speaker of the IBM-PC. usage: tran [+/-flags] [-options] [filename] The filename is an ASCII text file (with no word processor formatting codes). If no filename is given TRAN reads input from the keyboard. The flags and options control various features of the program. A '+' turns the flag on and a '-' turns the flag off. Options can use either '+' or '-'. flags: + = on, - = off p type output of phoneme translation [off] r add rule no. to phoneme translation [off] s say output [on] t echo input to console [off] T do phoneme translation [on] v type other internal information [off] options: c say the time of day [once] C say the time of day [every 10 seconds] d1 N use N for space rate timing [5] d2 N use N for voice rate timing [1] R print all pronunciation rules ? type usage The following are example of ways to use the TRAN program. You can have tran type out and read this file with the command: tran +t tran.doc If you also want to see the phoneme translation add the +p flag: tran +p +t tran.doc You can save the phoneme translation in a file by typing: tran -s +p tran.doc > tran.phn and listen to the phoneme at some other time file by typing: tran -T tran.phn The TRAN program will say the time once if you type: tran +t +c or will continue to say the time every 10 seconds if you type: tran +t +C There are two timing parameters, d1 and d2, that control the rate that TRAN speaks. Making d1 larger increases the pauses between words and making d2 larger lowers the pitch of the voice phonemes. Both d1 and d2 must have a value of 1 or greater. On an IBM-PC/XT, good values for the timing parameters are d1=2 and d2=1. If these parameters are not set explicitly, the program will try to determine acceptable values automatically. Setting these values, will let TRAN by-pass the automatic setting, which save a second or two starting the program. These values can be set on the command line: tran -d1 2 -d2 1 ... or by using the environment variable TRAN to pass these values as d1,d2: set TRAN=2,1 On a 10 MHz IBM-PC/AT the timing prarameters need to be larger, d1=4 d2=13. Most of the speech-to-text rules used in the tran program come from an article in an IEEE journal: Elovitz, H.S., Johnson, R., McHugh, A., and Shore, J.E. (1976). "Letter-to-Sound Rules for Automatic Translation of English Text to Phonetics," IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Vol. ASSP-24(6), 446-458. The program contains a set of 35 phonemes, each encoded as a sequence of bits controlling the position (in or out) of the PC speaker. The phoneme codes come from the public domain program SPEECH by Andy McGuire. Send your comments and suggestions to: Stephen Neely 11230 Ohio St. Omaha, NE 68131 =====================================cut here================================== -- Matt Heffron heffron@falstaff.css.beckman.com Beckman Instruments, Inc. voice: (714) 961-3128 2500 N. Harbor Blvd. MS X-11, Fullerton, CA 92634-3100 Cute saying/disclaimer in development.
doron@oboe.cs.cornell.edu (Leor Doron) (02/12/91)
The Jan. 28 issue of PC Week favorably reviews Monologue 2.0, $149 from First Byte of Santa Ana, CA, (714) 432-1740. Excerpts: "...plays through an internal or auxiliary speaker. The voice quality is surprisingly coherent, especially on fast computers... can be easily programmed into new applications or accessed from within packages such as Lotus 1-2-3 or dBASE... runs as a TSR, requiring between 140K and 225K bytes of RAM. If expanded memory or XMS memory is available, the program uses it, using only 45K bytes of base RAM." Will allow you to mark any text on the screen and will speak it; will work with Sound Blaster with esp. high quality; will NOT work under Desqview or Windows due to timing considerations. --Lee ==doron@cs.cornell.edu========================================================= = ".Sig! .Sig a .sog! .Sig it loud; .sig it .strog!" = ========= -- Karen Carpenter with a head cold =================================