Thank you for the additional pointers!  I still need to check out
promising combinations of those approaches, also options for MBROLA
(which is not free, but applies a custom AGPL-3.0-but-not-be-sold
license to the voices).  ADRIANE is certainly fascinating.

Best wishes
Jens

On 2023-09-11, briangpowell wrote:

> * eSpeak seems to focus on small footprints & a "format synthesis" method
>
> * Suggest using Festival with MBrola:
>
> https://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/mbrola.html
>
> https://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
>
> and/or just install FestivalLite:
>
> apt-get install -f -y --force-yes flite
>
> * Note EmacSpeak {mentioned in another email} is written by OrgMode user &
> programmer TV Raman--not sure EmacSpeak will help you at all; but it might
> be interesting for you
>
> ** Klaus Knopper distributes some very interesting free software that
> includes an audio-desktop called ADRIANE that maybe you can look at--I'd
> love to hear what you find out if you do:
>
> https://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html
>
> ** Knopper invented the "run Linux entirely from a cdrom" craze--which
> still is very useful in many ways--suggest you give Knoppix & Adriane a look
>
> On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 4:02 AM Christian Thäter <ct@pipapo.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 10 Sep 2023 16:39:26 +0200
>> Jens Lechtenboerger <lechten@wi.uni-muenster.de> wrote:
>>
>> > On 2023-09-10, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
>> >
>> > > Jens Lechtenboerger <lechten@wi.uni-muenster.de> writes:
>> > >
>> > >> does someone here produce audio via Text-To-Speech (TTS) from Org
>> > >> sources?  I plan to do that in the context of emacs-reveal to
>> > >> generate voice-over for reveal.js presentations, with open
>> > >> questions [1] concerning my initial, experimental approach.
>> > >
>> > > Emacspeak is a mature Emacs solution for TTS. However, it aims blind
>> > > users, not presentations. Still,
>> > > http://tvraman.github.io/emacspeak/manual/Quick-Installation.html
>> > > might be a good starting point for TTS options.
>> >
>> > Thank you for the suggestion.  With espeak this indeed pronounces
>> > numbers and abbreviations but its audio quality it not good enough
>> > for my purposes.  I am looking for (near-) human voices...
>>
>> using mbrola is probably as good as possible with free software:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBROLA
>>
>> still not perfect, but much better than the builtin voices of espeak or
>> festival (YYMV).
>>
>> >
>> > Best wishes
>> > Jens
>> >
>>
>>
>>