NAME¶
eBook-speaker - read aloud eBooks and other text formats using a software
speech-synthesizer
SYNOPSIS¶
eBook-speaker [eBook_file | -s [-o language-code]] [-d ALSA_sound_device] [-t TTS_command]
DESCRIPTION¶
eBook-speaker reads aloud eBooks and other text formats and even scanned
documents using a software speech-synthesizer. By default the tool espeak is
used for speech output.
eBook-speaker also can scan a documant by
itself using the scanimage application.
A list of items on the eBook will appear. Press <ENTER> to start reading.
When reading of an item has finished,
eBook-speaker will read the next
item and the cursor will automatically skip to that item, so that an attached
braille-terminal will display the name of that item.
OPTIONS¶
- eBook_file
- Give an eBook_file as argument to eBook-speaker. Many eBook
formats are supported. eBook-speaker also tries to read scanned
documents through Optical Character Recognition.
Supported formats
-----------------
AportisDoc
ASCII mail text
ASCII text
Broadband eBooks (BBeB)
Composite Document File (Microsoft Office Word)
DAISY3 DTBook
EPUB ebook data
GIF image data
GutenPalm zTXT
HTML document
ISO-8859 text
JPEG image data
Microsoft Reader eBook Data
Microsoft Windows HtmlHelp Data
Microsoft Word 2007+
Mobipocket E-book
MS Windows HtmlHelp Data
Netpbm PPM data
OpenDocument Text
PDF document
PeanutPress PalmOS
PNG image data
PostScript document
Rich Text Format
troff or preprocessor text (e.g. Linux man-pages)
UTF-8 Unicode mail text
UTF-8 Unicode text
WordPerfect
XML document text
When no input-file is supplied,
eBook-speaker will bring up a
file-manager.
Keyboard-commands in the file-manager:
enter or cursor right Start eBook-speaker with current file as input.
cursor left Select previous directory and open it.
cursor down Move cursor to the next file.
cursor up Move cursor to the previous file.
page-down View next page.
page-up View previous page.
/ Search for a file.
B Move cursor to the last file.
h or ? Give this help.
H Toggle hidden files displaying on or off.
n Search next.
N Search previous.
q Quit eBook-speaker.
T Move cursor to the first file.
- -d ALSA_sound_device
- eBook-speaker will play on this sound device. Default is
"hw:0". This option overrules the value in the
~/.eBook-speaker.xml config file.
- -l
- Deprecated. eBook-speaker now determines the file-type using the
libmagic library.
- -o language-code
- The language code for the tesseract OCR package to use. This option
overrules the value in the ~/.eBook-speaker.xml config file. If none is
specified, English is assumed. See the tesseract manual for the available
language codes.
- -s
- Scan a document using a hardware scanner and OCR it with the tool
tesseract.
- -t TTS-command
- Be sure that the TTS reads from the file eBook-speaker.txt and that it
writes to the file eBook-speaker.wav.
Examples:
- •
- eBook-speaker some.epub -t "espeak -f
eBook-speaker.txt -w eBook-speaker.wav -v nl"
- •
- eBook-speaker some.epub -t "flite eBook-speaker.txt
eBook-speaker.wav"
- •
- eBook-speaker some.epub -t "text2wave eBook-speaker.txt
-o eBook-speaker.wav"
SCREEN¶
The name and version of this program and the name of the author is displayed
left aligned at the top of the screen. The name of the current loaded book is
displayed right aligned.
The second row of the screen displays the number of pages of the current loaded
book (if any), the current selected level and the total number of levels, the
total number of phrases and the current displayed screen and the total number
of screens.
The spoken phrase will be displayed on the bottom-line of the screen, so one can
follow along on a braille-terminal what he/she hears.
The next rows displays the title of the item, the first page of the item within
brackets (if there are pages) and the total number of phrases in this item.
Items in higher levels are indented. (Three spaces each level.) When
"just reading this item" is active, a "J" is viewed at the
first column of that item.
CONTROL KEYS¶
eBook-speaker recognizes the following keyboard-commands:
- cursor down
- Move cursor to the next item.
- cursor up
- Move cursor to the previous item.
- cursor right
- Skip to next phrase.
- cursor left
- Skip to previous phrase.
- page-down
- View next screen.
- page-up
- View previous screen.
- enter
- Start reading.
- space
- Pause/resume reading.
- home
- Read on normal speed.
- /
- Search for a label.
- B
- Move cursor to the last item.
- d
- Store current item to disk in WAV-format.
- D
- Decrease reading speed.
- f
- Find the currently reading item and place the cursor there.
- g
- Go to phrase in current item.
- h or ?
- Give this help.
- j
- Just read current item and place a "J" at the first column.
- l
- Switch to next level.
- L
- Switch to previous level.
- n
- Search forewards.
- N
- Search backwards.
- o
- Select an output sound device.
- p
- Place a bookmark.
- q
- Quit eBook-speaker. The reading-point is saved as bookmark.
- r
- Rotate the scanned document. If the document is accidently placed
upside-down on the scanner, tesseract can not OCR it correctly. This
command will rotate the scanned document 180 degrees.
- s
- Stop reading.
- t
- Select a TTS.
- T
- Move cursor to the first item.
- U
- Increase reading speed.
TTS¶
When pressing the 't'
-command, the TTS-selector appears. A few
TTS-applications are defined by default.
- •
- Choose one by moving the cursor with the cursor-keys and select it by
pressing the ENTER-key.
- •
- To delete a TTS-command press the DEL-key.
- •
- A new TTS-command can be provided by adding the TTS-command to the
TTS-line.
- •
- To edit an existing TTS-command one has to edit the ~/.eBook-speaker.xml
file by hand.
Be sure that the new TTS reads its information from the file eBook-speaker.txt
and that it writes to the file eBook-speaker.wav.
TTS EXAMPLES¶
Here are some examples to insert into the TTS-selector:
espeak -f eBook-speaker.txt -w eBook-speaker.wav
espeak -f eBook-speaker.txt -w eBook-speaker.wav -v mb-en1
espeak -f eBook-speaker.txt -w eBook-speaker.wav -v de
espeak -f eBook-speaker.txt -w eBook-speaker.wav -v nl
espeak -f eBook-speaker.txt -w eBook-speaker.wav -v mb-nl2
flite eBook-speaker.txt eBook-speaker.wav
swift -n Lawrence -f eBook-speaker.txt -o eBook-speaker.wav
text2wave eBook-speaker.txt -o eBook-speaker.wav
text2wave -eval '(voice_en1_mbrola)' eBook-speaker.txt -o eBook-speaker.wav
pico2wave -w eBook-speaker.wav "`cat eBook-speaker.txt`"
FILES¶
- ~/.eBook-speaker/
- This directory contains the bookmarks in XML-format. Each file has the
name of the book and contains the name of the current item, the
start-phrase of that item, the current level, the desired TTS and the
desired reading speed.
- ~/.eBook-speaker.xml
- This file, in XML-format, contains the name of the desired audio device,
the desired OCR language and the TTS's to use. (See TTS EXAMPLES)
- /tmp/eBook-speaker.XXXXXX
- eBook-speaker makes use of a temporary directory. It is removed
after quiting.
SEE ALSO¶
ebook-convert(1),
calibre(1),
lowriter(1),
tesseract(1),
espeak(1),
flite(1),
text2wave(1),
mbrola(1),
pico2wave(1),
scanimage(1),
magic(5),
man2html(1),
unar(1)
AUTHOR¶
Jos Lemmens <jos@jlemmens.nl>
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (C)2014 Jos Lemmens <jos@jlemmens.nl>
This program 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, or (at your option) any later version. This
program 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. You
should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this
program (see the file COPYING); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA