eBook-speaker - read eBooks with Linux using a speech-synthesizer
(C)2013 J. Lemmens

DESCRIPTION
eBook-speaker reads an eBook and uses a speech synthisizer for output.
eBook-speaker reads the EPUB format. If the given file is not an
EPUB it will be converted using several tools like calibre, lowriter,
pandoc, pdftohtml, scanimage, html2, 2html or ocrfeeder.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats)
eBook-speaker can use any TTS (Text-To_speech) tool, as long as the TTS
can read the text from a file and writes the audio to a .wav file.
The file ~/.eBook-speaker.xml contains TTS tools to use.

REQUIREMENTS
Be sure the following extra packages exist on your system:

   libncurses5
   libncursesw5
   libsox1b
   libmagic1
   libxml2
   unzip
   gettext
   language-pack-nl
   language-pack-de
   espeak
   libreoffice-writer
   calibre
   pandoc
   xml2
   poppler-utils
   ghostscript
   ocrfeeder
   sane-utils

The following packages are needed to make the manual and the html document:

   txt2man
   man2html

FILES
Download and unpack the file 'eBook-speaker-<version>.tar.bz2'.
In the created directory 'eBook-speaker-<version>' you'll find the
following files:

- Changelog: Changes made in the previous versions
- COMPILE: Information about how to compile and install eBook-speaker
- COPYING: copyright information.
- eBook-speaker.c: source code
- eBook-speaker.de.po: translations for the german language
- eBook-speaker.desktop: file for the graphical interface
- eBook-speaker.h: source code
- eBook-speaker.nl.po: translations for the dutch language
- eBook-speaker.txt: manual page in ASCII format
- daisy.h@: source code
- daisy3.c: source code
- error.txt: information about error.wav
- error.wav: soundfile will be played when an error occured
- install.sh script to install eBook-speaker
- License: The text of the GPL version 3 license of eBook-speaker
- Makefile: needed to compile from source
- Readme: the text you are reading now.
- TODO: things to do.

INSTALLATION
As user 'root' on the command line, run the install.sh script to
install the package:

   # ./install.sh

USAGE
As a mortal user, give on the command line,:

   $ eBook-speaker file.epub

This starts reading the eBook and printing the content on
the screen. After giving an [ENTER], the eBook will be read using the
espeak speech synthisizer. One can select another TTS using the 't'command.

A list of items on the eBook will appear. Press <ENTER>
to start playing. When reading of an item has finished, eBook-speaker will
play the next item and the cursor will automatically skip
to that item, so that your braille-terminal will display the name
of that item.

For keyboard navigation, plese press 'h' or '?'.

eBook-speaker is multilingual. The following languages are currently
supported:
english, german, dutch.

Enjoy

Jos Lemmens
jos@jlemmens.nl
http://www.jlemmens.nl
