Linux TTS Voices

[Kyle]

eSpeak is currently the best free/open source voice synthesizer 
available for Linux, and it's really quite good, especially considering 
its size and memory usage. I use it on my system every day and it 
definitely sounds better than flite, better than the old Microsoft 
voices such as Sam, Mary and mike and much better than the proprietary 
and unmaintained IBMTTS or ViaVoice or TTSynth or Voxin or whatever 
they're calling it now. That being said, some people are used to hearing 
the outdated voices, and there are some other proprietary voices that do 
sound good. Since it's all about user preference and giving people 
choices, an interface to speech-dispatcher may be the best thing for 
your application, unless you are writing it for personal use only. 
Something simple could basically pipe through spd-say or have its own 
simple client. Something more complex can interface directly with the 
speech-dispatcher API for much more user control and/or functionality.

Hope this helps,
Kyle
-- 
  Jesus you're my life.
I live only to serve You
  Each and every day.
--Kyle