Topic on Talk:Wikispeech

hi am follow this project for a some time and as a Linux user with dyslexia. The first question that i have is there a libraries version for building other software. Second question is there a offline mode.

The reason of the first question is that the current TTS packets on linux (Festival, espeak) have no easy way to interface to other software with out execute a shell command. Another problem with the exec method is the length of the text, this can be the problem with the software that i use or the data is send via the command line.

The idea behind the offline mode is for offloading wikimedia servers and using for Third party application on PC/raspberry pi for example Calibre or a screen reader.

Last this is not in my two question but a note on the current state of TTS under linux is that the current Free/open Source voices are bad qualety (espeak) or the software is open source but the TTS voices are close source or a restricted license. And a good guideline is MS SAM (sapi 4 and sapi 5) for the minimum quality for a TTS voice that use in an production environment.

First off, sorry for the delayed response.

The Wikispeech system is divided in two main components: the MediaWiki extension and the TTS server.

For your first question, the TTS server uses MaryTTS, along with a couple other modules. You can find the latter at https://github.com/stts-se/pronlex and https://github.com/stts-se/wikispeech_mockup. While the server is primarily developed for use with MediaWiki, we try to make it general enough to be usable with other software.

As for your second question, it is possible to run the TTS server locally on your own server. Since it has an HTTP API, you can use it the same way, regardless of where the server is running.

If you want to try the software, we would be happy for any feedback and could give support to some extent. Note, however, that both the MediaWiki extension and the TTS server is still very much under development.