Speech server VoiceMan

VoiceMan offers one more speech server implementation for GNU/Linux systems. It takes care of centralized text-to-speech translation and its functions cover various details like particular TTS-engine choosing, convenient methods of configuring, different communication ways etc. However VoiceMan does not perform speech synthesis by itself, it is just a tool for convenient access to external speech synthesizers.

The most popular application of speech servers is in the world of accessibility technologies. With their help blind users can get information taken from a screen by special software usually called "screen readers". VoiceMan do its work always in real-time mode. Synthesized speech signal cannot be neither postponed for playback in future nor saved to external file.

Access to TTS-engines through a speech server is usually encouraged due to the following reasons:

  1. It prevents overlapping of simultaneous speech fragments provided by different clients.
  2. It brings one more level of abstraction between screen readers and TTS-engines. This level makes configuration of speech output easier and helps to gather all necessary settings in single place.