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!

  • @omawarisanEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    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.

    • BOMBSOPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      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?

      • @omawarisanEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        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.

        • BOMBSOPEnglish
          1•1 year ago

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

      • @omawarisanEnglish
        2•1 year ago

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