Running eSpeak on Linux until Linux Praat audio has been fixed

[Rob van Son]

There are currently problems with Praat audio under Linux. You can read some explanations and possible solutions on:
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/download_linux.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProcedure

One problem is that SGC can hang during speech synthesis while the other audio tasks still works.

To get the speech synthesis working again until this audio problem is fixed, you can add a speech synthesizer command to the settings directory of SpeakGoodChinese.

First, make sure you have eSpeak installed and working. You can probably find it in the repositories of your distribution.
http://espeak.sourceforge.net/

In your home directory, locate the following settings directory. If you cannot find it, start up SGC and close it again once. The directory should have been created.
Linux:
.SpeakGoodChinese2/TTS

Mac*:
~/Library/Preferences/SpeakGoodChinese2/TTS

Create the file with the name below in this directory (or use the attached file):
TTS_UNIX_eSpeak_command.txt

Start the file with a single line:
espeak -z -s 100 -v zh

On the Mac you can (also) use the Mac say command (with much better quality):
say -vTing-Ting  --rate=95

You can change the synthesis parameters to your liking. It might work with other speech synthesizers. But they should work when called as:
<your command line> "ni3hao3"

From this moment on, SpeakGoodChinese will use this eSpeak command to synthesize speech.

*: To access the Library directory on Mac OSX, see 

http://www.macworld.com/article/2057221/how-to-view-the-library-folder-in-mavericks.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/access-hidden-user-library-files.html