Jovie – conversion of text to audible speech

Last Updated on July 11, 2021

The Jovie text-to-speech system is a plugin based service that allows any KDE (or non-KDE) application to speak using the D-Bus interface. This software aims to become the standard subsystem for all KDE applications to provide speech output.

Jovie uses the speech-dispatcher daemon for the actual speech job; kmouth is a useful front-end for it.

This package is part of the KDE accessibility module.

Features include:

• User Features:
  • Speak any text from the KDE clipboard.
• • Speak any plain text file.
• • Speak all or any portion of a text file from Kate, including instances where Kate is embedded in another KDE application.
• • Speak all or any portion of an HTML page from Konqueror.
• • Use as the speech backend for KMouth and KSayIt.
• • Speak KDE notifications (KNotify).
• • User-configurable filters for substituting misspoken words, choosing speech synthesizers, and transforming XHMTL/XML documents.
• Programmer Features:
• Priority system for screen reader outputs, warnings and messages, while still playing regular texts.
• Permit generation of speech from the command line (or via shell scripts) using the qdbus utility.
• Provide a lightweight and easily usable interface for applications to generate speech output.
• Applications need not be concerned about contention over the speech device.
• Asynchronous to prevent system blocking.

Website: techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Text-To-Speech
Support:
Developer: Jeremy Whiting, José Pablo Ezequiel Fernández, and contributors
License: GNU GPL v2

Jovie is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Return to Speech Tools Home Page

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