Good Festival Gui 4 Reading Aloud Txt/pdf/html Files On 2x

[danboid]

I don't currently own a 2X but I seriously considering buying my friends for

a) Reading TXT, PDF and HTML aloud
B ) MP4 player

I've had a look through the archives and noticed there is FLite, but by the sounds of things this is too basic as it doesn't even handle DOS/Windows formatted text files- unix text only. I know conversion is simple but it shouldn't be necessary. All I want is a simple file chooser for picking the file you want read or the option to resume one of a number of texts you were part of the way through listening too.

At the moment I get my Zaurus or PC to read stuff out to me using the command

less textfile | festival --tts

This command works for plain text and pdf. I can pause it with CTRL-Z and resume it with a 'fg' or 'bg' but if I reboot when part way through then I've just got to read through the text to try to find where I was so its not ideal.

Would anyone know how to improve that command so a 'cumulative word count' or some other useful indicator of my position in the text file is displayed in its console display and does a suitable program (better than Flite) already exist for the 2X?

 

[danboid]

It would seem that neither flite nor festival support any kind of file position status output so I've wrote to Alan Black, head festival dude, to see what he's got to say.

As I say, the GP2X makes a perfect 'digital text book reader' and IMO this will be a major selling point (after MP4 playback via TV-out). Its a feature that will be of greater appeal than MAME as I think more people would be interested in having books read to them easily w/ bookmarks, voice selection etc. than play Final Fight.

This festival/flite GUI I'm dreaming of will of course also be perfectly usable on Pandora, Zaurus, Openmoko and anything that can run SDL at 320x240 or higher.