Speech Dispatcher

Speech Dispatcher is a software designed to provide a device-independent layer for speech synthesis with a simplified and well-documented interface. The main objective is to take care of most of the tasks necessary to solve speech-enabled applications. This application is similar to high-level GUI libraries to graphics - it is to speech synthesis. By calling the Speech Dispatcher interface functions, applications can easily integrate Synthesizer with Speech Dispatcher, which handles requests by sending them to specific synthesizers in addition to handling message priorities and keeping track of their history, providing some extra features like sound icons, among others. This software eliminates the need to talk to synthesizers directly or handle difficult aspects of speech synthesis.

The architecture of Speech Dispatcher is based on the client/server model. The Speech Dispatcher application serves as a control application and doesn't perform the task of synthesizing the sound output itself. It can use any particular speech synthesizer such as Festival, Flite, Epos, among others, through the concept of output modules. Users can write an output module for any synthesizer they like with ease. Speech Dispatcher can also be configured to switch contexts on one synthesizer when used by multiple clients or to use different synthesizers for different clients or different languages.

The basic means of client communication with Speech Dispatcher is through the Speech Synthesis Independent Protocol (SSIP) using a TCP connection. Client libraries for various languages are also available as part of the project, including Elisp, Common Lisp, C, and Python. This level of accessibility allows for seamless usage across many different platforms and development environments.

The latest release of Speech Dispatcher adds support for eSpeak and IBM TTS in addition to numerous bug fixes. With Speech Dispatcher, developers can easily create speech-enabled applications without the need to understand or fiddle with all the complex aspects of speech synthesis. This software is an excellent tool for developers looking to create dynamic, speech-enabled applications.