muflone / gespeaker

A text to speech GTK+ front-end for eSpeak and mbrola to play a text in many languages with settings for voice, pitch, volume and speed

Gespeaker

Description: A GTK frontend for espeak

Copyright: 2009-2021 Fabio Castelli

License: GPL-3+

Source code: https://github.com/muflone/gespeaker

Documentation: https://www.muflone.com/gespeaker

Translations: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/gespeaker/

Description

Gespeaker allows you to play a text in many languages with settings for voice, pitch, volume and speed.

The text that has been read can also be recorded to WAV file for future listening.

Since version 0.6 it supports the speech synthesizer MBROLA for a better speech experience.

System Requirements

• Python 3.x (developed and tested for Python 3.9.4)
• XDG library for Python 3 ( https://pypi.org/project/pyxdg/ )
• GTK+ 3.0 libraries for Python 3
• GObject libraries for Python 3 ( https://pypi.org/project/PyGObject/ )
• PSUtil library for Python 3 ( https://pypi.org/project/psutil/ )
• Google Text-to-Speech library for Python 3 ( https://pypi.org/project/gTTS/ )
• Distutils library for Python 3 (usually shipped with Python distribution)
• espeak for basic eSpeak voices
• MBROLA for enhanced MBROLA voices and at least one of the MBROLA voices
• Pulseaudio player (technically paplay command line)

Installation

A distutils installation script is available to install from the sources.

To install in your system please use:

cd /path/to/folder
python3 setup.py install

To install the files in another path instead of the standard /usr prefix use:

cd /path/to/folder
python3 setup.py install --root NEW_PATH

Usage

If the application is not installed please use:

cd /path/to/folder
python3 gespeaker.py

If the application was installed simply use the gespeaker command.

gespeaker's Issues

Play queue

The text should be splitted in lines
each line should be in a play queue so the user can alter it while the playing is going

MBROLA hangs with long texts

MBROLA has some trouble with long texts.
It will be useful to bypass the MBROLA piping and let espeak to play on itself.

http://forum.ubuntu-it.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=296322&p=4415176#p4415062

Welcome text

Welcome text should be disabled if the user doesn't want it

Espeak plays the mbrola voice by its own

Since version 1.44 espeak plays the mbrola voices by its own instead of relying on external mbrola process.

http://espeak.sourceforge.net/mbrola.html

From eSpeak version 1.44 onwards, eSpeak calls the mbrola program directly, rather than passing phoneme data to it using a pipe.

Doing so, Gespeaker doesn't control espeak and mbrola output anymore, resulting unstoppable and unpausable.

Female voice

Male and female voices needed

dependency problem on kubuntu 10.10

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. install and launch gespeaker

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
gespeaker doesn't start. console output is reported below:

virgolus@virgolus:~$ gespeaker
starting gespeaker
python version detected: 2.6
loading interface from /usr/share/gespeaker/data/ui/gespeaker.glade
loading controls from UI
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "gespeaker.py", line 33, in
main = gespeakerUI.gespeakerUI()
File "/usr/share/gespeaker/src/gespeakerUI.py", line 77, in init
self.loadControls()
File "/usr/share/gespeaker/src/gespeakerUI.py", line 99, in loadControls
self.winMain.set_icon_from_file(handlepaths.get_app_logo())
glib.GError: Couldn't recognize the image file format for file '/usr/share/gespeaker/data/icons/gespeaker.svg'

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
gespeaker from ubuntutrucchi repo. kubuntu 10.10

Please provide any additional information below.
I have fixed the problem installing python-rsvg package.

Hide voices

See issue #29
The user should be able to hide voices that he doesn't know.

Play from clipboard

A feature to play a text in the clipboard should be implemented

debian wheezy variants location

In debian wheezy (amd64) the path for variants
vardir = '/usr/share/espeak-data/voices/!v' (in src.EspeakFrontend)
doesn't exist.
But there exists this path
'/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/espeak-data/voices/!v/'
may be this is the correct one.

Better Voices

I have installed gespeaker. But sound quality is very bad. I am a window user, using NaturalReader. On linux, the voices are too bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcIBjAsc5iQ

See this video, that is a related video of gspeaker video.. see the robot.. gspeaker voice is like that.. anything near natural.

I am trying to switch to ubuntu. Since i use TTS a lot, i need to find a tts that have good understandable voice.

I found

https://www.cepstral.com/demos/

They have linux voices. If there is decent voice in linux, i can get it as i use tts everyday.

It can be used with gspeaker ?

Also if gspeaker can read from selected text, it will be very useful.

Save window size

Save window size on close or request

Save window size

Save window size on close or request

Icon Hardcoded

The icon is located in /usr/share/gespeaker/data/icons/gespeaker.svg making it hard-coded and impossible to change using icon themes. I'm reporting this here because the request was made by one of your users here https://github.com/numixproject/numix-icon-theme-circle/issues/396#issuecomment-37806687

URL opening

An http url should be opened if needed

URL opening

An http url should be opened if needed

Add a "clear" button

Logo review

Logo change

Some mbrola voices are not detected

English variants of some mbrola voices like mb-af1-en or mb-fr1-en are not detected even if the mbrola package is provided and the non english variant works properly.

Add setting for espeak '-m' SSML markup support

It would be nice to be able to toggle espeaks SSML support setting (-m added to the command line). Maybe a checkbox in the Advance Settings area?

To see the SSML settings supported by espeak look here:

http://espeak.sourceforge.net/ssml.html

Gespeaker could handle html formated files then too. When this is enabled many html tags are ignored/not spoken.

It would probably be best to have this setting off by default.

Thanks for everything you have done with this little program so far.

Follow Text Feature

When text is read, highlight the current text gespeaker is reading. It is a good feature, so we can see which part of text is currently reading.

I see this feature in espeaker-gui. It will be a great feature if we can get it in gespeaker

No way of knowing if Gespeaker is using mbrola

I installed mbrola on ubuntu 10.10, the voices show up in preferences mbrola but there is no indication if these voices are being used in the speech. These voices are not listed in the language or variant drop down lists.
There is also no improvement in the voice too.

Pause & Stop Greyed Out

Ubuntu 12.04 [LTS]
Gespeaker 0.8.1
GNOME III

Upon loading Mbrola English mb-en1, or any voice for that matter, pause & stop are greyed out. I have to wait for dialogue to finish before pressing play again.

Minimum delay should be zero

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Move the delay slider to the far left
2. Lowest possible delay setting is 5

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
I would expect that the delay can be set to zero.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
gespeaker 0.7, Ubuntu 9.10 64bit

Please provide any additional information below.
A minimum delay of 5 produces quite choppy speech. I synthesized the same
German text with espeak+mbrola (german-mbrola-6) and the output sounds
much more natural: "espeak -f test.txt -v german-mbrola-6|mbrola -e /usr/
share/mbrola/voices/de6 - - | aplay -r22050 -fS16" Passing an empty string
in gespeakerUI.py:430 did the trick. Is there any reason for the limiting
the minimum delay to 5?

Best regards,
Matthias

Stop previous play

The user should be able to stop the playing instead of starting a new play

Gespeaker continues to play even after closing the program

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.cut and paste text into box
2.select English voice, press play
3. let it "speak" for a while and shut down program without pressing stop.
4. it will continue to speak in the background even after program is closed.
5. will stop entirely by kill process for paplay and espeak

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
as above

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Ubuntu 10.04 Gespeaker 0.81

Please provide any additional information below.

URL opening

An http url should be opened if needed

URL button in about dialog doesn't work

Opening the about dialog from the Help menu the button link telling Gespeaker doesn't work.
No messages and no actions are shown at all.

Play on paste

Almost everytime the user pastes something is for listen it
so a play on paste feature should be present

Playback cannot be stopped using mbrola voices

While stopping the playback using an eSpeak voice works well, you cannot stop the playback when using an mbrola voice – the Gespeaker application just »freezes« (and even turns »dim« if the text is longer) until the text was spoken completely.

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Paste a text of at least 30 words into the text area.
2. Choose an mbrola voice, e.g. »german-mbrola-6«.
3. Click on »Play« and try to cancel playback while it speaks
   by clicking on »Stop« – you will notice that the »Play«
   button doesn't even change its caption to »Stop«.

What is the expected output? What do I see instead?
I'd have expected the playback to be stoppable – just like
it is stoppable at all times when using an eSpeak voice,
e.g. »german«. But instead, the Gespeaker application
freezes (hangs) and turns dim after a while, still speaking.

What versions do I use? On what operating system?

• Ubuntu 10.10 64-Bit on Pentium-4 DualCore @ 3.46 GHz, 2 GB RAM.
• Linux Kernel 2.6.35-22-generic #35-Ubuntu (x86_64).
• espeak, mbrola, gespeaker … installed via Synaptic from standard
  repositories:
  • espeak 1.44.05~really-1.44.04-0ubuntu1
  • mbrola 3.01h-5
  • gespeaker 0.7-1

Thanks in advance for checking this out, fixing this annoying bug, pointing to the problem or providing a workaround. Please let me know, if you need more information.

Regards,

Dennis

Request: Clear textbox button

I frequenlty use Gespeaker to paste a phrase (using select to copy, and mousle middle-click to paste) from clipboard to hear pronounciation of words.

I think I'd would be good to have a button that would clear the textbox instantly, as right now I have to manually backspace all text I had there before I can proceed (selecting it would replace my clipboard content that I want to hear).

This feature could maybe satisfy my need:
Issue #22

Audio frontend

Choice from alsa (aplay), pulse-audio (paplay), esd (esdcat) or other

clipboard text to speech

Not an issue but a request but can you add in a reed form clipboard atomically?

You would be the only one on the market and would make a good USP, thank you for your time.

Voice variants

Ability to use the voice variants like +m2 o +whisper

plugin not able to installed

whenever i am trying to install a plugin for pidgin or any other IM its showing the following error.

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: gespeaker (>= 0.8.1)

gespeaker doesn't work

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.when I launch gespeaker from console i have the problem reported below
2.I use kubuntu 10.04

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
0.7 and 0.6

Please provide any additional information below.
virgolus@virgolus:~/Desktop$ gespeaker
starting gespeaker
python version detected: 2.6
loading interface from gespeaker.glade
loading controls from UI
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "gespeaker.py", line 22, in
main = gespeakerUI.gespeakerUI(APP_NAME, APP_TITLE, APP_VERSION)
File "/usr/share/gespeaker/gespeakerUI.py", line 65, in init
self.loadControls()
File "/usr/share/gespeaker/gespeakerUI.py", line 87, in loadControls
self.winMain.set_icon_from_file(Settings.iconLogo)
glib.GError: Couldn't recognize the image file format for file
'gespeaker.svg'

Test message to try settings

Play a standard (short) text to try the settings

No Mbrola-Voices visible on Ubuntu 11.04

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Install Gespeaker and mbrola-packages as described in the wiki
2. Start Gespeaker and open preferences and switch to Mbrola-voices-tab.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Expected: To see a list of voices
Seen: An empty list (no entries visible)

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Version 0.8.1, Ubuntu 11.04

Please provide any additional information below.
The preferences Window shows "Main program mbrola Package mbrola installed". The path to the voices is correct and trying to change it to something else and back doesn't change anything (still no voices found).

highlight text

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
it is really help if there is a function for highlight text and automatic scroll while reading text.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
0.8.1-2 (gespeaker)
0.2-0ubuntu1~ppa1+lucid (espeak-gui)
ubuntu 10.10 Desktop 32-bit
Acer Aspire 4520 AMD

Please provide any additional information below.
Jushadi Arman Saz, Indonesia

Record to file

Speech wav/mp3 recording on playing

mbrola languages

mbrola languages should be used instead of only those in espeak

Gespeaker don't record .wav from file or text

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.open a .txt with 30 lines or less or write any short text
2.Push record and Gespeaker show a message in the bottom panel that say "Recording audio to /home/'etc'/test.wav"
3.Never stop recording, and never create .wav

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
I expected Gespeaker record my text file into a .wav. Gespeaker don't create any audio file

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Gespeaker 0.8.1-2 from synaptic
espeak 1.44.05 from synaptic
mbrola 3.01h5 from synaptic
Ubuntu 10.10 x86_64; Kernel: 2.6.35-24-generic (x86_64)

Please provide any additional information below.
the text to speech works great, but i cant record any audio.

Missing plugin configuration

Plugins configuration in preferences window doesn't do anything, no results, no messages.

Gespeaker will not using Mbrola voices included with Ubuntu

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Install Ubuntu packages espeak and espeak-data
2. Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Mbrola voices tab
3. "Mbrola voices path:" Choose /usr/share/espeak-data/voices/mb
4. Push Refresh.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

The expected output is for these voices to show as installed.

$ ls /usr/share/espeak-data/voices/mb
mb-af1 mb-de2 mb-de7 mb-fr4-en mb-it4 mb-ro1 mb-us2
mb-af1-en mb-de4 mb-en1 mb-gr2 mb-la1 mb-ro1-en mb-us3
mb-br1 mb-de4-en mb-es1 mb-gr2-en mb-nl2 mb-sw1
mb-br3 mb-de5 mb-es2 mb-hu1 mb-nl2-en mb-sw1-en
mb-br4 mb-de5-en mb-fr1 mb-hu1-en mb-pl1 mb-sw2
mb-cr1 mb-de6 mb-fr1-en mb-id1 mb-pl1-en mb-sw2-en
mb-cz2 mb-de6-grc mb-fr4 mb-it3 mb-pt1 mb-us1

I see nothing different instead.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

I am using the Gespeaker 0.7 deb package on 64-bit Ubuntu 9.10.

Please provide any additional information below.

Ubuntu includes Mbrola voices. I shouldn't have to install them again
through a third party repository.

not all german mbrola voices are usable

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.Start Gespeaker
2.List the voices in Base Settings or Preferences
3.mbrola-voices de1, de3, de8 are not shown, even though they are installed

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Id' like to see and be able to use all installed voices ;-), I see mbrola-de6-gr, though, which isn't available...

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Gespeaker 0.8.1, Ubuntu 10.10, 32-bit

Please provide any additional information below.
Looks like the list is hardcoded and not generated from the actually installed files. Perhaps that should be changed, offering a link to the mbrola download page instead (makes it easier if new voices are added to the mbrola project, too)

Plugins disable is not saved

When the user disables some plugins from the preferences window its state is not preserved after the application is closed.
On application restart all the plugins are enabled again.

Save the settings

User settings should be saved

Nothing happens when clicking on "configure plugin"

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.Open up preferences / plugin
2.Click on "configure plugin"

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
A dialog box should open up to configure the plugin. However, nothing happens.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Gespeaker 0.8.1
Ubuntu linux 10.04

Please provide any additional information below.

mbrola-voices not detected

Hi!
gespeaker does not find installed Mbrola-voices
As requested in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gespeaker/+bug/919577

1. OS is Ubuntu 14.04, 64-bit
2. gespeaker package is 0.8.2_1, tried with git hub version as well, same thing
3. mbrola voices in /usr/share/mbrola/MBROLA/ (I copied de4, de5, de6, de7 files to that directory, but it doesn't make any difference, they are not found in the default path /usr/share/mrola/de4/de4 either, or anywhere else)
4. mbrola is 3.0h+1-1
5. espeak is 0.47.11-ubuntu1

it used to work with Ubuntu 12.04.

regards
hank

Pause and resume features

The user should be able to pause and resume a running playing

Ability to launch gespeaker from command-line with given input file / stdout

It would be nice, if gespeaker can be launched from command-line with file (or text from stdout) that should be spoken.