NAME

       ru_tts - software Russian TTS engine

SYNOPSIS

       ru_tts [options]
       ru_speak [options]

DESCRIPTION

       This manual page documents briefly the ru_tts and ru_speak commands.

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

       Symbols ‘+’ and ‘=’ immediately after a vowel in input text are treated as strong and weak
       stress sign respectively.

       ru_speak is a simple wrapper around ru_tts. It takes Russian text on its  standard  input,
       convert  it  into the spoken speech and plays produced sound via play utility from the sox
       package. It accepts input text in the current locale's character encoding taking  care  of
       proper recoding.

OPTIONS

       Both  programs  recognize the same set of options that for convenience can be divided onto
       several groups.

SPEECH CONTROL OPTIONS

       These options affect general speech parameters. The most of them accept 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.    Greater   value   proportionally  increases  the  parameter  level,  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.

       -r value
              Set speech rate factor. Reasonable value range is from 0.2 up to 5.0.

       -p value
              Set voice pitch factor. Reasonable value range is from 0.5 up to 3.0.

       -e value
              Set  speech  emotionality  factor.  Reasonable  value range is from 0.0 (absolutely
              monotone speech without intonations) up to 1.4.

       -g value
              Set interclause gaps duration factor. 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
              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.  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.

       -a
              Use an alternative (female) voice instead of the default one.

NUMBERS INTERPRETATION CONTROL OPTIONS

       By  default point and comma inside a number both are interpreted as decimal separator. But
       this behaviour can be changed.

       -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 integer and fractional parts will
              be interpreted as two distinct integer numbers.

PRONUNCIATION DICTIONARY RELATED OPTIONS

       -s path
              Points  location  of  stress  and  pronunciation  dictionary  to  use.  You may use
              pronunciation dictionary shipped with the package rulex here.

       -l file
              Save words that were not found in the dictionary in specified file.  It  is  useful
              for  dictionary  developing.  This  option  does matter only when the pronunciation
              dictionary itself is used.

OTHER OPTIONS

       -v
              Show program name and version.

       -h
              Show summary of options.

SEE ALSO

       sox(1), aplay(1), lexholder-ru(1).

AUTHOR

       Igor B. Poretsky <poretsky@mlbox.ru>.

                                         August 19, 2021                                RU_TTS(1)