this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Linux 101 stuff. Questions are encouraged, noobs are welcome!

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How can I the computer to audibly read what I have typed out to me? (self.linux4noobs)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by BackOnMyBS to c/linux4noobs
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I use Linux Mint 21.1. I make considerable typing errors when I write but I don't see them, so it would be helpful if the machine could read out loud my writings back to me. How can I get this to happen?

I would really prefer to not have to go through an extensive set of disability accommodation steps every single time nor hear the computer tell me everything that is happening on the screen, but I will do it if necessary. I'm hoping there's an app or a LibreOffice button I can push to read only my selected text.

Here's an example of the accessibility screen reader not being helpful for me: https://imgur.com/7QvU9y4

Edit:

So at the advice of @[email protected], I searched for apps using "text-to-speech" and found an app in the software manager called VoiceGen that seems helpful!

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[–] joneskind 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

My post won't be very helpful I'm afraid, and I know my advice won't be popular at all here, but if you are struggling you should consider trying macOS. I am not trying to sell you Apple products. It's just that accessibility features are truly well implemented in Apple OSes. I just checked and I can select some text, left click and just click speech. Plus there are tons of other features you might find handy.

You don't have to own a Mac to try macOS. just look for hackintosh on internet. It's really easy to install macOS on any PC nowadays.

[–] BackOnMyBS 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Appreciate the suggestion, but I don't want to install a separate operating system and restart the machine every time I want to proof read anything. I'm confident someone in the Linux world has already addressed this. At worst, I could just go to translate.google.com, copy & paste, and have the translator read the stuff back to me. I'm happy you have found what works for you though!

[–] joneskind 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You could use macOS as your main OS. It's UNIX. You'll get anything you could find on Linux.

I found a few Linux tools looking for "Text To Speech" in DuckDuckGo. Didn't you find anything useful ?

[–] BackOnMyBS 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Text To Speech

This!! This is the term I couldn't come up with. I was searching for "screen reader" and not get anywhere. Thank you!

[–] joneskind 2 points 2 years ago

You're welcome!

[–] Freesoftwareenjoyer 0 points 2 years ago

Only if the author doesn't mind Apple's spying and not being able to control their own computer.

[–] omawarisan 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you don't mind copy-pasting the text you could use the maryTTS web client available here . It has several voices for a handful of languages.

This could be a bit overkill, but there is also [a docker image[(https://github.com/synesthesiam/docker-marytts) with high-quality voices that you could run with docker:

$ docker run -it -p 59125:59125 synesthesiam/marytts:5.2

After that you should now be able to access the server at http://localhost:59125 . But then again this may be too much if you dont already need docker in your pc.

[–] BackOnMyBS 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

That looks promising! Unfortunately, the client link sends me to an insecure site, which I have been taught is something I should avoid, so I don't know what that link it to since I don't go to it.

The stuff in the 2nd link looks good! But in-keeping with this community's purpose, I don't know what a docker is. If you don't mind, could you explain?

[–] omawarisan 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You do well not trusting insecure sites - i think the maintainers of marytts just misconfigured their server.

If you don't use it already, maybe you should skip it for now - it's a bit of a can of worms - but in simple terms docker is a technology that bundles a software program with all of the other software that application needs to run, such as an operating system, third-party software libraries, etc.

You could give espeak-ng a try. You can install it via mint's software manager. You can then run it from the terminal like so

$ espeak-ng hello!

The problem with espeak is that the voices are very, very robotic. You could try different voices by using the -v command (espeak-ng -ven-us hello!). You can also list available voices for a language like so: espeak-ng --voices=en.

[–] BackOnMyBS 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

That sounds fun to try out even if just for the experience. Thanks for your help :)

[–] Freesoftwareenjoyer 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I found an article that describes different ways you can use it and how to easily paste text into it: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/command-line-text-to-speech

[–] BackOnMyBS 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's awesome! I really like Google's voice. I'm gonna search around and see if there's a way to get it to work on GUI. Let me know if you know of a way!

[–] Freesoftwareenjoyer 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't know of any, but wouldn't that be the same as what you do with google translate?

[–] omawarisan 1 points 2 years ago

have fun!

[–] omawarisan 2 points 2 years ago

Oh yeah, and sorry, i didn't realize this was linux4noobs, i should have suggested simpler solutions from the get go :)