Festival Speech Synthesis System: - Speech Resource Pages

33. Variable list Short descriptions of all variables
34. Function list Short descriptions of all functions
Index Index of concepts.
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1. Abstract
This document provides a user manual for the Festival Speech Synthesis System, version 1.4.3.
Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various
modules. As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command
interpreter, as a C++ library, and an Emacs interface. Festival is multi-lingual, we have develeoped voices in many
languages including English (UK and US), Spanish and Welsh, though English is the most advanced.
The system is written in C++ and uses the Edinburgh Speech Tools for low level architecture and has a Scheme
(SIOD) based command interpreter for control. Documentation is given in the FSF texinfo format which can generate
a printed manual, info files and HTML.
The latest details and a full software distribution of the Festival Speech Synthesis System are available through its
home page which may be found at
http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival.html
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2. Copying
As we feeel the core system has reached an acceptable level of maturity from 1.4.0 the basic system is released under
a free lience, without the commercial restrictions we imposed on early versions. The basic system has been placed
under an X11 type licence which as free licences go is pretty free. No GPL code is included in festival or the speech
tools themselves (though some auxiliary files are GPL'd e.g. the Emacs mode for Festival). We have deliberately
choosen a licence that should be compatible with our commercial partners and our free software users.
However although the code is free, we still offer no warranties and no maintenance. We will continue to endeavor to
fix bugs and answer queries when can, but are not in a position to guarantee it. We will consider maintenance
contracts and consultancy if desired, please contacts us for details.
Also note that not all the voices and lexicons we distribute with festival are free. Particularly the British English
lexicon derived from Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary is free only for non-commercial use (we will release an
alternative soon). Also the Spanish diphone voice we relase is only free for non-commercial use.
If you are using Festival or the speech tools in commercial environment, even though no licence is required, we
would be grateful if you let us know as it helps justify ourselves to our various sponsors.
The current copyright on the core system is