As a result of an ongoing thread, I am launching a project that should allow users on shared hosting accounts and other restricted Unix-like hosting systems to utilize text-to-speech synthesis, primarily the Festival TTS engine. The goal of the project will be to create a miniature, portable TTS system that a user can upload to their hosting account and use right away, without the need to compile the system or have access to privileged-only libraries. The ultimate aim here is for a user to be able to do the following, from start to finish: 1.) Determine a need for text-to-speech synthesis on the web. 2.) Locate this project. 3.) Download the compiled binaries and PHP source code. 4.) Upload the binaries and code to their existing hosting account. 5.) Set permissions on directories and configure the system as necessary. 6.) Integrate the system into their existing architecture and design. 7.) Use the system. I may set up a small mailing list for the project, as well as a forum to use with development, bugtracking, et cetera. I'm not entirely sure whether I will be hosting the entire project on one of my servers, or if I will use SourceForge for some or all of the hosting. Anyone who's interested in jumping on, let me know. We may not create a PHP-based TTS system, but we can do the next best thing. Besides, everything has to start somewhere! -- Daniel P. Brown [office] (570-) 587-7080 Ext. 272 [mobile] (570-) 766-8107
