RU_TTS(1)

📦 version 6.2.3, in debian trixie, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 RU_TTS(1) — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, listen up. this is the page for ru_tts and ru_speak, living in the General Commands Manual. yes it's a whole manual page. yes i'm gonna make it make sense. no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

ru_tts — a software Russian TTS engine. that's Text-To-Speech, babe. it speaks. in Russian. slay.

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

ru_tts [options]
ru_speak [options]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

This page documents briefly the ru_tts and ru_speak commands, so here's the tea 🍓.

ru_tts is a program that takes Russian text in koi8-r charset on its standard input and produces a digital sound stream in the raw linear signed 8-bit 10 kHz format on its standard output. literally piping text in and vibes out. iconic.

The symbols + and = immediately after a vowel in the input text are treated as the strong and weak stress sign respectively. so if you wanna stress a vowel, you go +. if you wanna be chill about it, you go =. periodt.

ru_speak is a simple wrapper around ru_tts. It takes Russian text on its standard input, converts it into the spoken speech and plays the produced sound via the play utility from the sox package. It accepts input text in the current locale's character encoding, taking care of proper recoding. so it's the glow-up version that also does the recoding for you. obsessed 🫶.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

Both programs recognize the same set of options, and for convenience they can be divided onto several groups. we love a well-organized queen.

🗣️ SPEECH CONTROL OPTIONS 🗣️

These options affect general speech parameters. The most of them accept a numeric value as an argument. All numeric values serve as factors applied to a default level of the corresponding parameter. Thus:

  • they must be positive numbers, and
  • the default value is 1.0.

A greater value proportionally increases the parameter level, a lesser value proportionally decreases it. Reasonable value range for various options is different, but any out-of-range value will be automatically reduced to the acceptable range. so don't stress, it'll tame you 🧚.

  • -r value — set the speech rate factor. Reasonable value range is from 0.2 up to 5.0.
  • -p value — set the voice pitch factor. Reasonable value range is from 0.5 up to 3.0.
  • -e value — set the speech emotionality factor. Reasonable value range is from 0.0 (absolutely monotone speech without intonations — like, zero feels, robot era) up to 1.4.
  • -g value — set the interclause gaps duration factor. okay this one has lore:
    • If this value is immediately prepended by one of the following punctuations ,, ., ;, :, ?, !, the factor will be applied only to the gaps implied by that punctuation.
    • If the value is prepended by the symbol -, it will be used for intonational gaps not caused by any punctuation.
    • Otherwise, all interclause gaps will be affected.
    • Use this option several times to adjust various gaps. The lower boundary of the reasonable value range is always 0.0, but the upper one greatly depends on the value prepending symbol and actual speech rate. she's complicated but she's worth it 💜
  • -a — use an alternative (female) voice instead of the default one. main character energy, obviously 👑.

🔢 NUMBERS INTERPRETATION CONTROL OPTIONS 🔢

By default, point and comma inside a number both are interpreted as decimal separator. but bestie, this behaviour can be changed. options below:

  • -d. — only point should be treated as decimal separator.
  • -d, — only comma should be treated as decimal separator.
  • -d- — disable decimal separators treating. In that case the integer and fractional parts will be interpreted as two distinct integer numbers. not me splitting your number into two whole other numbers 😭.
  • -s path — points to the location of the stress and pronunciation dictionary to use. You may use the pronunciation dictionary shipped with the package rulex here. chef's kiss, honestly.
  • -l file — save the words that were not found in the dictionary in the specified file. It is useful for dictionary developing. This option does matter only when the pronunciation dictionary itself is used. it's giving "research era" 🔥.

🌈 OTHER OPTIONS 🌈

  • -v — show the program name and version.
  • -h — show a summary of options.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

sox(1), aplay(1), lexholder-ru(1). go read those too, iykyk 🦋

🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

Igor B. Poretsky <poretsky@mlbox.ru>. thank you for your service, king 💖

and that's the whole page, bestie! go make your computer speak Russian. it's gonna eat. 💅✨

this was RU_TTS(1) from the General Commands Manual, dated August 19, 2021 — mwah, love that for us 🎀

📦 where this page comes from