* At least the only one I could find using a Google search
The Talking Bible Project is about creating software that reads the bible to you using the voice of your choice. This has been accomplished using a technology known as the Festival Text-to-speech engine which generates speech using a computerised voice. This speech can either be stored on your computer (as a WAV file) and subsequently burned to CD using a CD Writer. This CD can then be played on an ordinary stereo.
| Download Sample Truth2000/Festival Speech Samples | ||||
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| Speaker | WAV Size (KB) | MP3 Size (KB) | Download WAV | Download MP3 |
| Native Festival | 1,311 | 123 |
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| British Male | 1,310 | 123 | |
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| American Male 1 | 1,326 | 124 | |
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| American Male 2 | 161 | 15 | |
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| American Female | 1,326 | 124 | |
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Truth2000 (The Talking Bible Project) started out when I was looking for audio casettes for the Darby and CLV (Concordant Literal) translations. Sometimes I could not source cassettes at all, as was the case with Darby, and sometimes the speaker was not to my taste and that was the only speaker available for that translation.
So I wondered why we couldn't simply have our preferred speaker read to us all the translations that we enjoy. I had a look around the internet and I discovered this nice piece of software called Festival which comes with a large array of voices. So Truth2000 was conceived. Truth2000 generates audio files (WAV) of computerised speech. These WAV files can be burnt to CD using a CD Writer. Currently I burn translations to CD and then using an ordinary stereo I copy the CD to casette tape. Then I can play them in my car stereo. Alas my car CD player doesn't work. :( Hence the two step process.
Using the talking bible project it will be possible to choose a computerised speaker of one's own preference and use it with the preferred translation of choice. Also other factors will be able to be controlled such as speaking rate to suit personal preference.
One of the reasons I chose Linux as the OS of choice for this project is that there is no hardware independent CD burning API for Microsoft WindowsTM. If I am wrong about this let me know as I asked several people and they didn't know of any. Although Truth2000 doesn't currently automatically burn translations to CD I look forward to the day when this will be built into the program.
For the future I would like to get some elementary voice recognition built into the system. In this way the program could respond to voice commands such as "Stop", "Skip chapter"... etc. It would be a step towards keyboardless control. Not everyone likes to use one. ;) Eventually I thought it would be cool if I could simply talk to my computer and say "Hey computer, find me all scriptures with the word 'love' from the New Testament and read them to me". This is the approach using only open source software to achieve this goal.
The release of version 0.0.6 has added a number of new features. Remember that you will need to download and install festival before truth2000 will work at all. Detailed instructions on how to install festival have been included on the truth2000 site. You can read the readme online here. You can also find them in the CVS as the README file. Sorry this didn't get included with the rpm. I will include it with the next one. I have a suspicion that Festival have removed their rpms for the 1.4.1 version since they released the 1.4.2 version. If you want the rpms for the older version then let me know and I will put them up on my site.
The generate wav file button now works. A scripture passage can be converted into a wav file or several passages spanning several chapters can be converted into several wav files.
Search the scriptures is now working. At least its a start although not as full featured as I would like.
Why Another Computer Bible?
Some people might ask why another computer bible? Especially when there are other free implementations of computer bible software for Linux. Why not simply help with the development of existing projects? This has partly been influenced by my own preferences and philosophy of design. The issues which have motivated me to provide a new software design are:
This is the only linux talking bible that I know of.
Desktop and distribution neutrality. The software design shouldn't overtly favour, say, KDE and Red Hat. At some point I may wish to take advantage of WxWindows which provides a cross-platform API based on GTK. This should simplify the porting of this software to Microsoft Windows.
I want it to be easy for new developers to get on board this project and become productive without steep learning curves. This has been my experience with some of the other open source implementations. This will be helped somewhat by providing clean class interfaces that operate simply and as expected. I also intend to provide ample documenation on how it works and where to change things. This should greatly speed the development of this project.
Currently Implemented Features
Read chapters of scriptures and display them.
Speech using 5 of the available voices
Book name completion (saves typing).
Change the speed of the speaker. (Make the speaker speak slowly or like a racing commentator).
Create WAV files. These wav files can be manipulated for CD Writing.
Rudimentary support for searching the scriptures.
Features in Progress
Write wav files to CD (using a CD Writer) from the generated speech. This CD should be playable on any audio CD Stereo.
Screen Shots of New Version 0.0.6
| Truth2000 Screen Shots - Click to Enlarge | ||
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Some links which may be useful:
I am also watching with interest the following open source projects that may be useful for incorporation into this project.
Liscensing
The talking bible project is GPLed (and hence freely available to all).