How to compile Festival (Fedora RedHat)

1) Download the archives

from   http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/downloads/festival/1.95/

 festival-1.95-beta.tar.gz
 festlex_CMU.tar.gz
 festlex_OALD.tar.gz
 festlex_POSLEX.tar.gz
 festvox_don.tar.gz
 festvox_kallpc16k.tar.gz
 festvox_kedlpc16k.tar.gz
 festvox_rablpc16k.tar.gz
 speech_tools-1.2.95.beta.tar.gz

You don't absolutely -NEED- all of these files but they are required for a convenient test run.

Now create a new directory (for illustration I'll use ".../foo"). Copy all of the archives into foo and unpack them. You should now have 2 sub-directories under foo:

 .../foo/speech_tools
 .../foo/festival

2) Build the speech_tools first

cd into foo/speech_tools and execute the command

 ./configure

This will produce the file

 .../foo/speech_tools/config/config

I had to edit config to point to the right compiler. Specifically I changed the line

 COMPILER=gcc32   to   COMPILER=gcc

Next move back to the .../foo/speech_tools and execute

 ./make

Now get a cup of coffee or a beer or whatever because it will take a while.

Once the make is done you can issue

 ./make test

to see if everything is ok.

Now assuming speech_tools compiled ok its time to build festival proper.

3) Building Festival

Navigate to

 .../foo/festival

There should be no need to configure festival since it "inherits" configuration from speech_tools.

Issue the command

 ./make

Get another cup of coffee or beer or beverage of your choice....(tonight that would be a Scottish John Courage)

Once the make is done you can issue

 ./make test

if you wish.

4) Making Festival talk...

After the compiles you need to add .../foo/festival/bin to PATH in your ~/.bash_profile file.

 PATH=$PATH:.../foo/festival/bin

Now log out and back in and issue the command

 festival

Hopefully you will get a SIOD prompt. Try

 (SayText "Hello World")

to see if it all works.

5) Two caveats:

1) SIOD scheme appears to be case sensitive so saytext < > SayText. -- Pardon me if this is obvious but it is a very common mistake and I make it all the time.

2) When you log out and back into a Linux session all the mixer channels mute. Try the command aumix to set mixer levels etc.