This is the core Festival package

2) speech_tools-libs-1.2.1-1s.i386.rpm

This is the Edinburgh Speech tools Library

3) speech_tools-utils-1.2.1.1s.i386.rpm

This is the Edinburgh Speech tools utilities Library.

4) festlex_OALD-1.4.0-1.noarch.rpm

5) festlex_POSLEX-1.4.0-1.noarch.rpm

6) festvox_rablpc8k-1.4.1-1.noarch.rpm or festvox_rablpc16k-1.4.1-1.noarch.rpm

Having downloaded all of these RPM's, login as root to start the

installation.

Change to the directory where you downloaded the RPM's and issue the

following command to install the RPM's.

bash#rpm -ivh file_name.rpm

There can be certain dependancy issues when installing Festival. You will

have to install the EdinBurgh Speech tools Libraries and utilities first.

That's it! You have completed the installation of the Festival Speech

Synthesis System on your Linux box. Let's get to the next part -- using

Festival. As I mentioned earlier, there are various ways in which you can

make use of Festival. The most user friendly ones are the "Interactive

Festival Console" and the command line user access modes.

Before going any further you should make sure that your sound card is

configured and working correctly.

To get into the Interactive Festival shell mode just type the following at

the shell prompt.

bash#festival

You will find your self at a prompt like the one below

festival> Your speech synthesis system is ready to accept any input from you.

To get your system to talk to you, try out the following command.

festival> (SayText "type the text you want to hear over here")

The brackets are required here and the text to be spoken must be

enclosed in double quotes.

If you have a text file with something in it that you want to hear, use

the following command.

festival> (tts "filename")

Replace "filename" with the relative path to your text file and make sure

that the text in stored in a plain ASCII text file. You can use tab here

to quickly find the file that you are looking for.

This was working in Festival within its interactive shell mode. You could

also call Festival from the command prompt. If you have a plain ASCII text

file that you would like to hear, you could make use of the following

command.

bash# festival --tts file_name

In the above command replace "file_name" with the relative path to the

plain ASCII text file. For more information on using Festival, check out