On Wed, April 25, 2007 3:17 pm, tedd wrote: > At 2:07 PM -0500 4/25/07, Richard Lynch wrote: >>On Wed, April 25, 2007 2:00 pm, tedd wrote: >>> However, server-side "text to speech" is possible by delivering >>> the >>> sound to the browser via EMBED or BGSOUND tags -- an example of >>> this >>> can be seen here: >> >>I have run "Festival" server side via PHP to generate audio snippets >>of spoken word. >> >>All you really need is one of the "desktop" packages to have a >> command >>line interface and http://php.net/exec > > Richard: > > I've read about Festival and there are even some php routines that > use it. But I'm doing this from/for a virtual host. I'm looking for a > set of routines that I could place server-side and thus use to speak > web text. If you can compile (or find it compiled) on the exact same OS, you can probably upload the binary and then use 'exec' on your own program. I've had some success doing this on a shared host. You might also be able to convince the webhost to just install Festival for you. It would take them about 5 minutes, at most... They might be leery, of course, if they think it will be too resource-intensive. > I need something that I can share with others, not something special > for just my site. > > Is there a standard *nix package that I could access via exec to do > this? Is Festival commonly found on *nix? Festival is a standard *nix package, but NOT commonly found on *nix installs, I don't think. It's trivial to install, but most folks don't need it, so don't install it. > You see, what I'm thinking is, if I can get the code/technique, then > I might be able to provide a way for non-technical types to have > their sites speak. Maybe it's just foolish thinking, but I'm prone to > that. :-) Let me put it this way: There is unlikely to be anything with a better chance of suceeding in this endeavor than Festival. :-) If you build a really cool way for people to make their sites provide text-to-speech capabilities that everybody wants, and all that's needed is for webhosts to install your software and Festival, then they're gonna install Festival, because their users will demand it. In the short term, there almost-for-sure isn't any easy way to upload some magic widget that will work cross-platform and do text-to-speech. So you're going to have to create demand for your project, by making it super cool. As I always tell my indie musician friends: Remember the 3 D's: Demand Drives Distribution This is usually about why they shouldn't be chasing after somebody to be their Distributor until after they have enough fans to make it financially viable (and the Distributors will come knocking on their door). In this case, however, I'm suggesting that the Demand for your cool software could cause the Linux Distributions to include Festival. Waiting/Looking for the other way around, a distribution that includes some kind of text-to-speech that you can use, is unlikely to be fruitful. -- Some people have a "gift" link here. Know what I want? I want you to buy a CD from some indie artist. http://cdbaby.com/browse/from/lynch Yeah, I get a buck. So? -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
