speech-dispatcher

Common interface to speech synthesis

Introduction

This is the Speech Dispatcher project (speech-dispatcher). It is a part of the Free(b)soft project, which is intended to allow blind and visually impaired people to work with computer and Internet based on free software.

Speech Dispatcher project provides a high-level device independent layer for access to speech synthesis through a simple, stable and well documented interface.

Documentation

Complete documentation may be found in doc directory: the speech dispatcher documentation: doc/speech-dispatcher.html, the spd-say documentation: doc/spd-say.html, and the SSIP protocol documentation: doc/ssip.html.

Read doc/README for more information.

This documentation is also available online: the speech dispatcher documentation, the spd-say documentation, and the SSIP protocol documentation.

The key features and the supported TTS engines, output subsystems, client interfaces and client applications known to work with Speech Dispatcher are listed in overview of speech-dispatcher as well as voices settings and where to look at in case of a sound or speech issue.

Mailing-lists

There is a public mailing-list speechd-discuss for this project.

This list is for Speech Dispatcher developers, as well as for users. If you want to contribute the development, propose a new feature, get help or just be informed about the latest news, don't hesitate to subscribe. The communication on this list is held in English.

Development

Various versions of speech-dispatcher can be downloaded from the project archive.

Bug reports, issues, and patches can be submitted to the github tracker.

The source code is freely available. It is managed using Git. You can use the GitHub web interface or clone the repository from:

https://github.com/brailcom/speechd.git

Modules for different speech synthesis backends can easily be developped in different ways. This allows to integrate all kinds of speech syntheses, be they C libraries, external commands, or even http services, and whatever their licences since the interface between the speechd server and the syntheses is a mere pipe between processes with a very simple protocol. More details are available in the Output Modules documentation

Rust bindings are currently developed separately. You can use the GitLab web interface or clone the repository from:

https://gitlab.com/ndarilek/speech-dispatcher-rs.git

A Java library is currently developed separately. You can use the GitHub web interface or clone the repository from:

https://github.com/brailcom/speechd-java.git

To build and install speech-dispatcher and all of it's components, read the file INSTALL.

To try speech-dispatcher without installing it (e.g. to avoid disturbing an existing speech-dispatcher instance), you can run

./run-speechd -t 0 -s

and in another terminal run

./run-spd-say foo

People

Speech Dispatcher is being developed in closed cooperation between the Brailcom company and external developers, both are equally important parts of the development team. The development team also accepts and processes contributions from other developers, for which we are always very thankful! See more details about our development model in Cooperation. Bellow find a list of current inner development team members and people who have contributed to Speech Dispatcher in the past:

Development team:

• Samuel Thibault
• Jan Buchal
• Tomas Cerha
• Hynek Hanke
• Milan Zamazal
• Luke Yelavich
• C.M. Brannon
• William Hubbs
• Andrei Kholodnyi

Contributors: Trevor Saunders, Lukas Loehrer,Gary Cramblitt, Olivier Bert, Jacob Schmude, Steve Holmes, Gilles Casse, Rui Batista, Marco Skambraks ...and many others.

Licensing

Speech Dispatcher uses several layers of software, to allow for flexible licensing.

The central speechd server is essentially GPLv2.

The C api client library is essentially LGPL2.1-or-later, which thus allows to use it in various applications with little licensing concerns. It is connected to the central server through a socket with the SSIP protocol, in such a way that GPL licensing propagation doesn't apply.

The speech modules are connected to the central server through a pipe with a very simple protocol similar to SSIP, in such a way that GPL licensing propagation doesn't apply either.

To make writing speech modules simpler, a libspeechd_module library is provided under a BSD-2 license, which can thus be combined with essentially any other license.

Some more advanced module helpers are also provided under LGPLv2.1-or-later, but they are not mandatory.

In detail:

• The speech-dispatcher server (src/server/ + src/common/) contains GPLv2-or-later and LGPLv2.1-or-later source code, but is linked against libdotconf, which is LGPLv2.1-only at the time of writing.

• The speech-dispatcher modules (src/modules/ + src/common/ + src/audio/) contain GPLv2-or-later, LGPLv2.1-or-later, LGPLv2-or-later, and BSD-2 source code, but some parts are also linked against libdotconf, which is LGPLv2.1-only at the time of writing.

• The spd-conf tool (src/api/python/speechd_config/), spd-say tool (src/clients/say), and spdsend tool (src/clients/spdsend/) are GPLv2-or-later.

• The C API library (src/api/c/) is LGPLv2.1-or-later

• The Common Lisp API library (src/api/cl/) is LGPLv2.1-or-later.

• The Guile API library (src/api/guile/) contains GPLv2-or-later and LGPLv2.1-or-later source code.

• The Python API library (src/api/python/speechd/) is LGPLv2.1-or-later.

• All tests in src/tests/ are GPLv2-or-later.

Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Brailcom, o.p.s Copyright (C) 2018-2020, 2022, 2024 Samuel Thibault [email protected] Copyright (C) 2018 Didier Spaier [email protected]

This README file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This README file is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details (file COPYING in the root directory).

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.