ZZSpeech is a speech synthesis service for AmigaOS and the MNT ZZ9000.

It uses the ZZ9000 ARM Cortex-A9 Core1 to run a resident CMU Flite speech
engine. The Amiga side provides a resident daemon, a GUI frontend, a CLI
client, and a write-only DOS handler.

ZZSpeech is also a reference implementation of the Xanxi XACP/Core1 resident
service model for the ZZ9000.

IMPORTANT REQUIREMENT

ZZSpeech requires a ZZ9000 running Xanxi XACP/Core1-compatible firmware.
Current XX19 firmware is available from 
https://github.com/Xanxi-Amiga/XACP-V1/releases/tag/XX19_firmware
ZZSpeech does not work with stock MNT firmware 1.13. Other firmware builds,
are unsupported unless they explicitly implement
the same Core1 blob-launch ABI.


The Flite engine is loaded at runtime as
an external Core1 blob.

COMPONENTS

* ZZSpeechDaemon
  Resident service. Owns Core1, the loaded Flite voice, and AHI.

* ZZSpeechGUI
  Simple AmigaOS graphical frontend for entering text and sending it to the
  daemon.

* ZZSay
  CLI client for sending text or files to the daemon.

* ZZSPEECH:
  Write-only DOS handler. Allows Shell redirection and copy-to-speech usage.

* zspeech_core1.bin
  ARM Core1 Flite blob loaded at runtime.

* slt.flitevox
  Default CMU Flite voice.

BASIC USAGE

Start the daemon first:

Execute S:ZZSpeech-Start

or from the ZZSpeech directory:

ZZSpeechDaemon

Then use the GUI, the CLI client, or the DOS handler.

CLI examples:

ZZSay "Hello from ZZ9000"
ZZSay FILE RAM:text.txt
ZZSay STATUS
ZZSay QUIT

DOS handler examples, if ZZSPEECH: is mounted:

echo "Hello from ZZ9000" >ZZSPEECH:
copy RAM:text.txt TO ZZSPEECH:

INSTALLATION SUMMARY

Recommended layout:

SYS:ZZSpeech/
ZZSpeechDaemon
ZZSpeechGUI
ZZSay
zspeech_core1.bin
slt.flitevox
docs/
src/

The DOS handler must be installed in:

L:ZZSpeech-Handler

The startup script must be installed in:

S:ZZSpeech-Start

The ZZSPEECH mount file should normally be installed in:

SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers/ZZSPEECH

The recommended setup does not auto-mount ZZSPEECH: at boot. Start ZZSpeech
with:

Execute S:ZZSpeech-Start

The startup script starts the daemon and mounts ZZSPEECH:.

Advanced users may copy the ZZSPEECH mount file to DEVS:DOSDrivers/ if they
want it mounted automatically at boot. This is not recommended unless the
daemon is also started automatically and the required XACP/Core1 firmware is
always present.

LIMITATIONS

Only one Core1 blob can run at a time. While ZZSpeechDaemon is active, it owns
Core1. Before launching another Core1-based project such as ZZDoom,
ZZPicoDrive, Julia, or another ARM blob, stop the daemon with:

ZZSay QUIT

The default Flite voice is intelligible but synthetic. This is not neural TTS.
Other free voices can be downloaded from 
http://festvox.org/flite/packed/flite-2.1/voices/ ; 
ZZSpeech currently supports only .flitevox voice files smaller than 16 MB, 
because the voice staging area is limited to 16 MB.


SOURCES

Source code is not included in this archive. It will be published separately
on GitHub.

NOTES

This project is part of the XACP experiments: using the ZZ9000 as a real ARM
coprocessor for classic Amiga systems.

Speech synthesis is based on CMU Flite and CMU/FestVox voice data. See the
included license files for redistribution terms.

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO METHOD CRC     STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[Amiga]                   1769    4585  38.6% -lh5- 330f Jul 22 00:21 readme.txt
[Amiga]                2150393 2541150  84.6% -lh5- 0f46 Jun 28 21:22 slt.flitevox
[Amiga]                   7833   13680  57.3% -lh5- acab Jul 15 22:14 ZZSay
[Amiga]                    143     179  79.9% -lh5- fb20 Jul 13 00:00 ZZSPEECH
[Amiga]                   1348    2508  53.7% -lh5- 6155 Jul 12 23:50 ZZSpeech-Handler
[Amiga]                    415     747  55.6% -lh5- f4bb Jul 13 19:16 ZZSpeech-Start
[Amiga]                 489525  804108  60.9% -lh5- 7809 Jul 16 22:47 ZZSpeechDaemon
[Amiga]                   9334   16928  55.1% -lh5- 63f2 Jul 15 22:41 ZZSpeechGUI
[Amiga]                    774    1161  66.7% -lh5- 49e3 Jul 13 21:20 ZZSpeechGUI.info
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         9 files 2661534 3385046  78.6%            Jul 23 00:28