[ New Pandora Use ] Bard Storyteller


awbcmu

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Bard Storyteller is a text reader.  Bard not only allows a user to read books, but also can read books to the user using text-to-speech.

[New Pandora Use] entry for Alive and Kicking Coding Competition 2013/2014.

Bard if free software distributed under a BSD-like license.  It uses CMU flite to synthesize the text (with a choice of voices).  Bard supports txt, epub and (x)html files. It can be used as a standard ebook reader (with standard page forward/back and smooth scroll) as well as an application to read books to you. 

see http://festvox.org/bard for full sources

Alan
 
Thank you, this will prove very useful to me.

At the moment it doesn't seem possible to restart the speech synthesis once it has been turned off. I've tried [A] and tab, but the only way I can get it to work is to restart the application.
 
Thank you, this will prove very useful to me.

At the moment it doesn't seem possible to restart the speech synthesis once it has been turned off. I've tried [A] and tab, but the only way I can get it to work is to restart the application.
Thanks monty,  I ahve to admit I've never tested it over a sleep, I'll take a look at this.  There are a few other bugs I have found/fixed since yesterday, I intend to put out a new release in a week or so and will try to fix this issue then.

Alan
 
I wasn't very clear. I meant it isn't possible to restart the speech synthesis after the speech synthesis has been turned off. I.e. you can turn it off but you can;t turn it back on again. I wasn't referring to the the unit being put into sleep mode.
 
Very nice and works above expectations! The cmu_us_rms voice is very decent and I am pleased it doesn't sound like RMS at all ;)

I also noticed the problem with the voice that will not start once you have stopped it. I don't think folks will need this program for visually reading e-books so maybe make it start automatically with voice reading with a pre-chosen default voice?

Feature requests

Timer - shutdown pandora after reading for a certain time.

Goto page/position or very fast scrolling option with position info.

[Edit]: I just read in the 'readme' you can indeed change the position, but 5% steps are not very accurate. Next to the <<< and >>> you could add a < and > for more accurate positioning.
 
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Woah, I tested it and it sounds really good.

Paired with the epubs from Project Gutenberg, the Pandora now becomes a versatile audio book too.

Got a bug starting and stopping sometime though.
 
I wasn't very clear. I meant it isn't possible to restart the speech synthesis after the speech synthesis has been turned off. I.e. you can turn it off but you can;t turn it back on again. I wasn't referring to the the unit being put into sleep mode.
Hmm, ok.  I do this all the time (starting and stopping it).  I actually seem to change between it reading to me, it scrolling and simple page forward when I use it.

I have occasionally seen it not restart speaking, but its rare (maybe happens more when I change voice).

Can you tell me a little more about what you are doing when it doesn't restart.  Do you have any other apps running that might be using the sound device?  Which version of the OS are you using (I've tested this both on my old rebirth 600MHz beta 1.1 Superzaxxon 1.5, and my 1GHz version).  Does it still fail to start speaking again if you change the voice? ('v' key and select a different voice).

thanks

Alan
 
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