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Re: Scripting TTS
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Re: Scripting TTS


On Jul 13, 2005, at 12:16 PM, Dennis Wilen wrote:

After complaining for a long time that TTS wasn't scriptable in OSX

I'm not quite sure what you mean. All the techniques in this article have always worked in MacOS X, and
in general, scripting is easier on X than on 9.

One technique new to MacOS X which you might not be aware of yet is the /usr/bin/say command line tool (type "man say" for documentation).
 
I ran across
SpeechQueue, a freeware TTS utility from 2002.  

The download includes three scripts.

Here are typical line from one of the enclosed AppleScripts:

speak text "twinkle" pitch 60 rate 100
speak text "twinkle" pitch 50 rate 60

That doesn't seem to be a huge improvement over the "say" command built into AppleScript:

say "[[pbas 55; rate 100]] twinkle" using "Fred"
say "[[pbas 50; rate 30]] twinkle" using "Fred"


which do not seem to work when one tries to get SpeechQueue (which is a
"service" in this instance) -- the two lines sound the same.

The difference between 60 and 100 in speaking rates can be fairly subtle for a single word, and if you're using MacOX X 10.2 or 10.3, the "pitch" parameter is not functional (it is functional again in 10.4).

In trying to build the various characters for my TTS project, it'd be
great if I could tweak the voices in a consistent manner.  Having
little sliders for pitch and speed and modulation doesn't give me the
granularity and repeatability I need..

Use /usr/bin/say or AppleScript "say" and embedded commands.

I've written the developer of SpeechQueue for more info and await her
response.

The OS 9 scripting also included emphasis, pause, and duration,   but
there is no documentation equivalent for OSX as near as I can tell.
Everything documented for MacOS 9 in this regard should also work in MacOS X.

Matthias

Dr. Matthias Neeracher
Senior Software Engineer, Spoken Language Technologies


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