espeakup connector
=======================

espeakup is a program which makes it possible for speakup to use
the espeak software synthesizer.  It does this by reading speakup's
softsynth device and passing the text to espeak which actually speaks.

Requirements
============

This program works with the speakup screen reader, which can be obtained
from http://linux-speakup.org, and the espeak software speech
synthesizer which can be obtained from http://espeak.sourceforge.net.
You must have both of these installed and operational.  Setting them up
is beyond the scope of this document.

Installation
============

The preferred way to install espeakup is using your distribution's
packaging system, but if your distribution does not have a package for
espeakup yet, here are some basic instructions.

To install espeakup, first cd into the directory where you
unpacked the tarball, then issue make to compile the program.  Once this
is done, as root, issue make install.  This will install espeakup in /usr/bin.

ALSA SUPPORT
============

Direct support for alsa was just contributed to this project; I would
like to thank Chris Brannon for his work on this.  Currently,, it is in
the early stages, so if you have any suggestions or patches, I am
definitely interested.

To build with alsa support, add "AUDIO=alsa" to the make command when you
compile the program.

Starting Up
===========

This program should be run after speakup is set up to communicate with a
software synthesizer and after /dev/softsynth exists.  The way this is
done is distribution specific, so it is beyond the scope of this
documentation.

Command Line Options
====================

Espeakup currently accepts the following command line options:

  --default-voice=voice, -V voice	Set default voice.
  --debug, -d				Debug mode (stay in the foreground).
  --help, -h				Show this help.
  --version, -v				Display the software version.

Getting the Latest Version
==========================

Currently, a tarball of the latest official release will be included in
the contrib/ directory of the speakup repository.  Also, it is possible
to download a tarball of any released version from github as follows:

wget http://www.github.com/williamh/espeakup/tarball/vx.y

Also, the clone URL, if you are familiar with using git is
git://github.com/williamh/espeakup.git.

Acknowledgements
================

I would like to thank Marc Mulcahy, the author of the speakup to
TTSynth connector, on which this work is based.  Also, I would like
to thank Kirk Reiser and Jonathan Duddington, the
authors of Speakup and Espeak, respectively, for their work.

Questions
=========

You can contact me with questions, bugs, patches, etc, at
w.d.hubbs@gmail.com or on the speakup mailing list.  I hope you find
this software to be useful.