About

This LaunchAgent uses native macOS speech synthetiser to either read random news article title from RSS feed or just reads a text supplied using HTTP GET request.

Installation

You need to have Xcode IDE installed on your mac. Just type sudo make install. Installation directory is Applications/Speaker. Installation Makefile uses sudo. After the installation, agent is automatically loaded. For uninstallation, just type sudo make uninstall. Root privileges for make are needed to write plist into /Library/LaunchAgents (deploy agent).

Using the speaker

You can communicate with the app using HTTP API. Default address is http://localhost:8080/.

Description of the API:

GET requests:
  /say/{text}           - Read given text. Words are separated by "-".
  /read-rss             - Read random article title from set RSS feed.
  /set                  - Change configuration of the speaker.
                           Usage example: /set?voice=jorge, /set?volume=0.8&rate=170
    ?voice={voice-name} - Speaker voice (see /voices for all available options)
    ?rate={rate}        - The synthesizer's speaking rate (words per minute) expressed in floating-point unit.
                           Average human speech occurs at a rate of 180 to 220 words per minute.
    ?volume={volume}    - The synthesizer's speaking volume is expressed in floating-point unit ranging from 0.0 through 1.0.
  /voices               - Show all available voices
  /restart              - Shutdown and restart the daemon
  /help                 - Show this page
  
POST requests:
  /say                  - Read given text in POST body, using the content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
                           Usage example: curl -d "This is test."  http://localhost:8080/say

Settings

You can pass a path to the plist with the application settings as a command line argument. If no arguments are passed, application uses default settings stored in /Applications/Speaker/defaultSettings.plist. Valid keys and values are:

RSS     [String]  - URL adress of the RSS feed
Rate    [Number]  - The synthesizer's speaking rate (words per minute) expressed in floating-point unit.
Volume  [Number]  - The synthesizer's speaking volume is expressed in floating-point unit ranging from 0.0 through 1.0.
Voice   [String]  - Full name of the sysnthetizer's voice
Jingles [Boolean] - If true, jingles are used also for /say
Port    [Number]  - Port for the server

Notes

In case of any error, user is informed either by HTML content or directly by synthetizer and in log.

Used libraries

BiAtoms/Http.swift

A tiny HTTP server engine written in swift. See Http.swift

filipmelik/news-speaker