Using
Before you can use , you must install speech-dispatcher and make sure it is working. See Installation.

Starting jovie
To start the system, type the following command in a
jovie
or click on in the Menu.
If this is the first time running jovie, or if you have not yet configured any talkers, the Talkers screen appears. See Configuring Talkers. If you have already configured at least one talker, the General screen appears. See Starting Jovie and Setting General Options.

Configuring Talkers
Most text-to-speech (TTS) synthesizers offer multiple languages and voices and may offer multiple speaking genders, volumes, and rates. You may configure more than one instance of a synthesizer. Each combination of language, synthesizer, voice, gender, volume, and rate is called a talker. You should configure at least one talker before you use otherwise speech-dispatcher will use a default voice.
Multiple talkers for the same synthesizer is similar to multiple print queues for a single physical printer.
When you click the Talkers tab in jovie, the Talkers screen appears. This screen also automatically appears if you start jovie and you have not yet configured any talkers.
The Text-to-Speech Manager (Talkers tab).
The Text-to-Speech Manager (Talkers tab)
Click to add a new talker.
All the configured Talkers are listed here. Highest priority Talkers are listed at the top. The top-most talker will be used to do the speaking when an application does not specify a talker.
Click on a talker in the list to highlight it and click this button to remove it.
Click on a talker in the list to highlight it and click this button to change its configuration. See below.
Click on a talker in the list to highlight it and click this button to move it down one row in the list. The lower a talker appears in the list, the lower its priority.
Click one of these buttons to apply the changes you have made to the running system.
When you click the Add button, the Add Talker screen appears.
Add Talker screen.
Add Talker screen
You should give your new talker a name, this can be anything.
Choose the language and synthesizer here.
Choose the voice type here, there are three Male, three Female, one Male Child and one Female Child voices to choose from.
Set any custom voice parameters here.
When you click here your new talker will appear in the list in the Talkers screen. Click the Edit button to edit the talker's configuration.
You are almost ready to begin using . Now go back to the General tab and check the Enable Text-to-Speech System (Jovie) box. This will start the TTS Daemon. See Starting Jovie and Setting General Options. You may now begin using to speak text. Click the Jobs tab to create and manage text jobs. See Managing Text Jobs.

Starting Jovie and Setting General Options
Once you have configured at least one talker, you can start the Text-to-Speech System. Click on the General tab. The General screen appears. You can also set some general options on this screen.
The Text-to-Speech Manager (General tab).
The Text-to-Speech Manager (General tab)
Check this box to activate the system. This starts the TTS Daemon (Jovie). If Jovie starts successfully, the Jobs tab will appear. Once Jovie has been started, you can begin creating and speaking text jobs. See Managing Text Jobs. Unchecking will stop Jovie and deactivate the TTS system.
Be sure to click here to save your settings.

Managing Text Jobs
When you click the Jobs tab in jovie, the Jobs screen appears.
The Text-to-Speech Manager (Jobs tab).
The Text-to-Speech Manager (Jobs tab)
The controls here allow you to change attributes of the currently speaking voice.
The buttons in this row permit you to stop, cancel, pause and resume the current text job.
The buttons in this row permit you to speak the text currently in the clipboard, or open a text file for speaking. You can also change the talker for a job.
When you click OK or Apply, all changes to settings on other screens are applied (if any).
The Jobs tab only appears when Jovie is running. If you do not see the Jobs tab, click on the General tab and check the Enable Text-to-Speech (Jovie) box.

Speaking Text from Web Pages
While running the web browser, you can speak the text of the web page displayed. First ensure that is running. Highlight the text you want spoken and choose Tools Speak Text on the main menu. After a moment, the highlighted text should begin speaking.
It is almost always a good idea to highlight the text on the web page you want spoken. You can skip this step, but you will hear a lot of headers and other invisible tags spoken.

Speaking Text from Text Editor
While running the Advanced Text Editor (), you can speak the text displayed. First ensure that is running and enable the KTextEditor Jovie Text-to-Speech Plugin in 's settings dialog. Highlight the text you want spoken and choose Tools Speak Text on the main menu. After a moment, the highlighted text should begin speaking.
You do not have to first highlight text. In this case, the entire file will be spoken.
This also works when is running embedded in another application, such as or .

Speaking Notifications (KNotify)
KNotify is the notification subsystem within , which alerts you to events you configure within the system. You can configure to speak text notifications.
For example, , a IRC application, permits you to configure a wide variety of notifications. For instance, you can tell to notify you whenever a message appears in an IRC channel with your nickname in it. Together with you can have speak the text of the IRC message to you.
In general, if a application supports KNotify, a Notifications menu item will appear under the application's Settings menu. The specifics for configuring each application with KNotify vary from application to application.
String Replacer filters are a good way to clean up messages sent from applications if they are mispronounced or misspoken in . The kmail.xml file, which comes with , is a good example. It removes br, and b tags from the notification messages and also removes the phrase /local/inbox/, since this may be safely assumed in most cases. See Configuring String Replacer Filters.

Filters (Advanced)
Filters are an advanced feature of . For the basic operation of , they are not needed.
Filters are used to pre-process text before it is sent to speech-dispatcher. They are useful for enhancing speech, substituting for misspoken words or abbreviations, choosing the appropriate language and talker to do the speaking, or working around certain limitations of speech synthesizers and their voices.

Types of Messages
To understand how to use filters, it is helpful to first understand how text is processed by speech-dispatcher. Text spoken by is of four possible types.
Screen Reader Output.
Warnings.
Messages
Text Jobs
The type is determined by the application that sends the text to .
Screen Reader Output has the highest priority. It is reserved for use by Screen Reader applications. Screen Reader Output preempts all other messages, causing those jobs to pause. Once the Screen Reader Output has been spoken, the preempted messages will automatically resume.
Warnings are the next highest priority. It is reserved for high-priority messages, such as "CPU is over-heating." A Warning will preempt Messages and regular text, causing those jobs to pause. Once the Warning has been spoken, the preempted messages will automatically resume.
Messages are the next highest priority. A Message will preempt regular text jobs. is an example of an application that uses Messages. For example, while reading out long text from a web page, can be used to greet someone who walks into the room. Notifications are also Messages (see Speaking Notifications (KNotify)).
The rest are ordinary Text Jobs. Any job you initiate from the Jobs tab is a Text Job. KSayit is an example of an application that uses Text Jobs. Text Jobs are intended for longer speech output that is not urgent.
All four kinds of jobs are queues, except for Screen Reader Output. If a Screen Reader Output is sent from an application while is speaking another Screen Reader Output, the speaking message is stopped and discarded.

Types of Filters
The first thing you must know about filters is that they are never applied to Screen Reader Output. They are applied to Warnings, Messages, and Text jobs, and also notifications (KNotify).
Filters process the text and pass it on to the next filter. There are currently three kinds of filters.
String Replacers.
Transformers
Talker Choosers.
Filters are implemented using a plugin architecture. In the future, there may be additional kinds of filters.
String Replacer filters substitute pieces of text with other text. The replaced pieces are matched either as words or as regular expressions. comes with pre-defined String Replacer filters for speaking abbreviations, speaking chat emoticons, such as ":-)", or reformatting notification messages from or into a more understandable form.
Transformers use an Style Language - Transforms (XSLT) file to convert of one format to another format. comes with a couple of XSLT files for converting into SSML.
Talker Choosers permit you redirect jobs to a talker based on the contents of the text, or upon the application that sent it to . For example, if you have configured a female talker in the Talkers tab, you can direct text coming from KSayIt to that talker. See Configuring Talkers.
Each of these kinds of filters has configurable rules for when the filter should apply itself to the text to be spoken. If the filter determines that it should not apply itself, the text is passed on to the next filter unaltered.
When a Text Job, Message, Warning, or Notification message is sent to , it passes through each of the enabled filters you have configured in the screen below. The order is from top to bottom.

Configuring Filters
To use filters, click the Filters tab in jovie.
The Text-to-Speech Manager (Filters tab).
The Text-to-Speech Manager (Filters tab)
This is the list of configured ordinary filters. If unchecked, the filter is inactive and will be bypassed. Filters are applied in the order specified here, top to bottom.
Click here to add a new filter. You will be prompted for the kind of filter to add. After choosing the kind, see the configuration dialogs below.
Click here to remove a filter.
Click here to change the configuration of a filter. See the configuration dialogs below.
Click these buttons to move a filter up or down in the list.
Be sure to click here, otherwise your settings will not take effect.

Configuring String Replacer Filters
You configure String Replacer filters by supplying a list of words or regular expressions to be matched. When the matched words or regular expressions are found in the text, each is replaced by a substitute string you supply.
String Replacer
String Replacer
Enter a name for your filter. Use any name you like that distinguishes it from all other filters.
This is the list of words and regular expressions. The filter searches for matches on each string in the Match column, replacing the matched string with the string in the Replace With column. The list is processed in the order displayed, top to bottom.
Click here to add another word or regular expression to the list.
Click here to move the currently highlighted word or regular expression up or down in the list.
Click to change an existing word or regular expression in the list.
Click to remove the currently highlighted word or regular expression from the list.
Use these buttons to load a list of words or regular expression from a file, save the current list to a file, or clear the entire list. When loading from a file, the items in the file are appended to the existing list.
If not blank, the filter will apply itself only if the job's talker language matches the language you enter here. Click the button to display a list of languages. You may select more than one language by pressing while clicking.
If not blank, the filter will apply itself only if the text came from one of the applications listed. You may enter more than one application separated by commas. Example: konversation,kmail
You can discover the Application ID of running programs using the qdbus program. You should leave the numbers out. For example, if qdbus shows an Application ID of kopete-3432, you would just enter kopete.
The String Replacer filter will only apply itself to the text if all non-blank conditions are met in the Apply This Filter When box. If all the boxes are blank, the filter will apply to all text.
When matching words, the String Replacer filter internally uses a regular expression of the form \sword\s. In other words, the word must have word boundaries (spaces) on either side of it.
A discussion on how to write regular expressions is outside the scope of this handbook. If you have the Regular Expression editor installed, there is a button available on the Add or Edit screens that will assist you at constructing regular expressions. The Regular Expression Editor is part of the kdeutils package.
comes with a few word list files, including a list of emoticons, such as ":-)", some abbreviations typically used in IRC or instant messaging applications, and a list of other abbreviations. There is also a list of special characters which the current version of the Polish Festival voice cannot handle. If you develop useful word lists of your own, use the Save button to save them to a file and send them to the team for inclusion in the next version.

Configuring Transformer Filters
The Transformer filter uses XSLT files to transform from one format to another. XSLT, the Style Language - Transforms, is a W3C standard language for performing such transformations. It can only be used on well-formed . You must have the xsltproc utility installed.
Transformer
Transformer
Enter a name for your filter. Use any name you like that distinguishes it from all other filters.
Enter the full path to an existing XSLT file, which will perform the transformation.
Specify the path to the xsltproc utility. If xsltproc is in your environment PATH, simply enter xsltproc.
If not blank, the filter will apply itself only if the has the specified root element or a <!DOCTYPE specification beginning with the entered string. This distinguishes one form of from another. For example, html in the DOCTYPE box will match <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">.
If not blank, the filter will apply itself only if the text came from one of the applications listed. You may enter more than one application separated by commas. Example: konversation,kmail
You can discover the Application ID of running programs using the qdbus program. You should leave the numbers out. For example, if qdbus shows an Application ID of kopete-3432, you would just enter kopete.
The Transformer filter will only apply itself to the text if the specified root element or DOCTYPE are met and if the application ID is met in the Apply This Filter When box. If an item in this box is blank, the test is not performed, so if all the boxes are blank, the filter will apply itself to all text. However, you should fill in at least one box, since many text jobs will not be in format.

Configuring Talker Chooser Filters
Talker Chooser filters are used to direct the text to a desired talker configured in the Talker tab, or to any talker having specified attributes. For example, you can specify that text coming from kmail should be spoken using a talker configured with a female voice. See Configuring Talkers.
Just before begins sending text to each of the filters, it picks a talker to speak the text. The talker chosen is based on the talker attributes specified by the application that sent the text to and the attributes of the talkers that you have configured on the Talkers tab. The Talker Chooser filter permits you to override the chosen talker.
Talker Chooser
Talker Chooser
Enter a name for your filter. Use any name you like that distinguishes it from all other filters.
If not blank, the filter will apply itself only if the text contains the entered regular expression. If it is installed, click the browse button to launch the Regular Expression Editor to assist you at entering the regular expression.
For better performance, try to "anchor" the regular expression to the start of the string. In other words, start your regular expression with ^.
If not blank, the filter will apply itself only if the text came from one of the applications listed. You may enter more than one application separated by commas. Example: konversation,kmail
You can discover the Application ID of running programs using the qdbus program. You should leave the numbers out. For example, if qdbus shows an Application ID of kopete-3432, you would just enter kopete.
Specify the attributes of the talker you prefer to speak the text here. If the text meets the filter conditions above, a talker will be chosen that most closely matches the attributes you specify here. Click the button at the right to display the Select Talker screen.
Use these buttons to save your Talker Chooser settings, load settings from a saved file, or clear all the settings.
The Talker Chooser filter will only apply itself to the text if all non-blank conditions are met in the Apply This Filter When box. You must fill in at least one of the boxes.