speech synthesis

[Alistair Campbell]

Hiya,

I am a newbie with Python so any response to this may be way over my head.

Basically, I am wanting to know whether there are any python modules that
allow you to write programs which include voice synthesis. The sort of thing
I am wanting to look at is an augmentive communication program for disabled
people with speech and language disorders. So, I want to be able to convert
typed text and stored blocks of text into audible speech using standard
sound card interfaces. The application would be event driven and, at this
stage, I would probably look at building the GUI using Tkinter.

I am using Python 2.2 on a Windows OS. I have a Linux OS as well but I am
not at all proficient with the file management on this so I don't really
want to get into learning that interface just yet.

If there is not a simple solution to this would there be a group of people
around who would be interested in porting the Festival speech synthesis
engine to the Windows OS and then writing the wrappers(is that the right
term?) to be able to call it from Python.

Alistair Campbell
Qld, Australia

t = ("Our 2 main weapons are...", "fear", "surpise", "and a fiendish
devotion to the Pope!", "Oh Damn.")