Android Port of eSpeak Text-to-Speech

• Prerequisites
• Building with Gradle
• Building with Eclipse
• Building with Ant
• Signing the APK
• Installing the APK
• Enabling eSpeak on the Device

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This branch contains the files needed to build espeak on the android platform. It is derived from the eyes-free project.

Prerequisits

To build eSpeak for Android, you need to have the following installed and configured correctly:

1. Android SDK
2. Android NDK
3. wxWidgets 2.8 (for espeakedit when building android/res/raw/espeakdata.zip)

If you are building with Eclipse, you will also need:

1. Eclipse
2. Android Developer Tools (ADT) for Eclipse

If you are building on the command line, you will also need either:

1. ant (e.g. run sudo apt-get install ant on a Debian-based distribution), or
2. gradle 1.7, which can be installed from the Ubuntu PPA debian file (including on Debian systems)

Building with Gradle

1. Set the location of the Android SDK:

2. Build the project:

   $ ./autogen.sh
   $ ./configure
   $ make
   

This will create an android/build/apk/espeak-release-unsigned.apk file.

Building with Eclipse

1. Build the JNI binding and espeak data file by running:

   $ ./autogen.sh
   $ ./configure
   $ make jni espeakdata
   

2. Open Eclipse.

3. Create a new workspace.

4. Import the espeak folder as an exising Android project.

5. Build the espeak apk within Eclipse.

The generated eSpeakActivity.apk can be installed like any other apk build via eclipse, such as by using the Run menu option.

Building with Ant

1. Build the JNI binding and espeak data file by running:

   $ ./autogen.sh
   $ ./configure
   $ make jni espeakdata
   

2. Update the project using the Android utility which is part of the SDK:

   $ cd android
   $ android update project -s -t 1 -p .
   

3. Build the package.

   $ ant release
   

Signing the APK

In order to install the built APK (e.g. bin/eSpeakActivity-release-unsigned.apk) you need to self-sign the package. You can do this by:

1. Creating a certificate, if you do not already have one:

   $ keytool -genkey -keystore [YOUR_CERTIFICATE] -alias [ALIAS]
   

2. Sign the package using your certificate:

   $ jarsigner -sigalg MD5withRSA -digestalg SHA1 \
     -keystore [YOUR_CERTIFICATE] \
     bin/eSpeakActivity-release-unsigned.apk [ALIAS]
   

3. Align the apk using the zipalign tool.

   $ zipalign 4 bin/eSpeakActivity-release-unsigned.apk \
     bin/eSpeakActivity-release-signed.apk
   

Installing the APK

Now, you can install the APK using the adb tool:

$ adb install -r bin/eSpeakActivity-release-signed.apk

Enabling eSpeak on the Device

After running, eSpeakActivity will extract the espeakdata.zip file into its own data directory to set up the available voices.

To enable eSpeak, you need to:

1. go into the Android Text-to-Speech settings UI;
2. enable eSpeak TTS in the Engines section;
3. select eSpeak TTS as the default engine;
4. use the Listen to an example option to check if everything is working.