eSpeak Text-to-Speech for Android

• Build Dependencies
  • Debian
• Building
  • Building with Gradle
  • Building with Eclipse
  • Signing the APK
• Installing
  • Enabling eSpeak on the Device
• Bugs
• License Information

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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.

Build Dependencies

In order to build eSpeak, you need:

1. a functional autotools system (make, autoconf, automake, libtool and pkg-config);
2. a functional c++ compiler;
3. wxWidgets development libraries (needed to build and run espeakedit to compile the phoneme data).

In order to build the APK, you need:

1. the Android SDK;
2. the Android NDK;
3. Gradle 1.7.

In order to use Android Studio, you will also need:

1. Android Studio.

In order to use Eclipse, you will also need:

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

Debian

Dependency	Install
autotools	sudo apt-get install make autoconf automake libtool pkg-config
c++ compiler	sudo apt-get install gcc g++
wxWidgets	sudo apt-get install libwxgtk2.8-dev
gradle	gradle-1.7_1.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb

Building

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.

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

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.

Bugs

Report bugs to the espeak issues page on GitHub.

License Information

eSpeak Text-to-Speech is released under the GPL version 3 or later license.