Weston Ruter

<p>This plugin allows you to create text-to-speech podcasts of your posts, with the content from embedded URLs supplied by Readability’s Parser API. It aims to be a open self-hosted re-incarnation of defunct <a href="http://soundgecko.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">SoundGecko</a> service.</p>
<p>When a <a href="https://www.readability.com/developers/api/parser" rel="nofollow ugc">Readability Parser API</a> key is supplied, a post which gets saved with a bare URL as its content will have this content prepended with the content that Readability extracts from the page at that URL. This allows you to import an article’s full contents into your podcast just by saving a post with a URL in its content (e.g. by sharing an article URL to your blog via Jetpack’s <a href="http://jetpack.me/support/post-by-email/" rel="nofollow ugc">post by email</a>).</p>
<p>In addition to supplying a URL for the content you want in the podcast, you can also just add the content directly to the post itself without any corresponding article URL, and this content will be converted to TTS (text-to-speech) audio instead. You can also, of course, attach an MP3 to a post and it will be used for the podcast instead of TTS-generated audio from the post content or enclosed URL.</p>
<p>The TTS audio is generated by a Mac regularly connected to the Internet (e.g. your Mac). It generates the article audio MP3 using the OS X <code>say</code> command. You can configure the voice and the rate for the speech audio generated. (Use of the OS X voice is not required; an alternative TTS solution may be devised instead.) The MP3 gets attached to its corresponding post, being prepended to the post content by means of an <code>audio</code> shortcode.</p>
<p>A new <code>listenability</code> permalink endpoint is introduced which contains the text content of a given post presented in a textual form which can be ready by a text-to-speech (TTS) engine. It is specifically designed to be read by the speech synthesis engine in OS X as it includes <a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/SpeechSynthesisProgrammingGuide/FineTuning/FineTuning.html" rel="nofollow ugc">embedded speech commands</a>. The RSS2 feed includes a new <code>enclosure</code> element containing the URL for this endpoint with the ad hoc content type <code>text/plain+embedded-speech-commands</code>.</p>
<h4>Restrictions</h4>
<p>Note that the Readability Parser API is freely available for <em>non-commercial use</em>. The article content fetched by Readability and inserted into your posts is copyrighted by their respective authors (attribution gets included in the post content). Likewise, the speech audio generated by OS X is for <a href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/43300/28836" rel="nofollow ugc">personal, non-commercial use</a>. It is therefore key that there be <em>no advertising</em> employed on the WordPress install that uses this plugin. Because of the non-commercial and personal usage imposed by these dependencies, it is recommended that this plugin be used on your own personal dedicated podcast blog that is set to block search engines, that is unless you have obtained a commercial Readability license and are not using TTS audio generated by OS X.</p>
<h4>Dependencies</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.readability.com/developers/api/parser" rel="nofollow ugc">Readability Parser API</a> key. This can also be supplied in <code>wp-config.php</code> via the <code>READABILITY_PARSER_API_KEY</code> constant.</li>
<li>Mac computer (OS X) that is regularly connected to the Internet (e.g. your computer), with <a href="http://sox.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow ugc">SoX</a> installed (e.g. via <a href="http://brew.sh/" rel="nofollow ugc">Homebrew</a>).</li>
<li>(Optional) <a href="http://jetpack.me/" rel="nofollow ugc">Jetpack</a> plugin, for the <a href="http://jetpack.me/support/post-by-email/" rel="nofollow ugc">Post by Email</a> feature.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Extensions</h4>
<p>The plugin includes actions and filters primarily for customizing the formatting of the text for the text-to-speech engine. You may use these hooks to improve how the TTS engine reads the text on a given site, for instance by stripping out footnotes or removing image captions. For an example of such a plugin, see the <a href="https://gist.github.com/westonruter/dfaa45b026a2bb6a36e0" rel="nofollow ugc">sample plugin which improves formatting of Wikipedia articles</a>.</p>
<p>See the <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/wp-listenability/tree/master/php" rel="nofollow ugc">plugin source code</a> to see which additional plugin hooks are available.</p>
<h4>Contributing</h4>
<p>This plugin is <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/wp-listenability" rel="nofollow ugc">developed on GitHub</a>. Report <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/wp-listenability/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">issues</a> there. <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/wp-listenability/pulls" rel="nofollow ugc">Pull requests</a> welcome.</p>
<h4>License</h4>
<p>GPLv2 license. Copyright 2015 by Weston Ruter.</p>


Listenability

Create a text-to-speech podcast of your posts, with the content from embedded URLs supplied by Readability. Open re-incarnation of SoundGecko.

<p>Add text-to-speech (TTS) to content, with playback controls, read-along highlighting, multi-lingual support, and settings for rate, pitch, and voice.</p>
<ul>
<li>Uses local text-to-speech engine in user’s browser. Directly interfaces with the <code>speechSynthesis</code> browser API. Zero external requests or dependencies.</li>
<li>Words are selected/highlighted as they are being spoken to allow you to read along.</li>
<li>Skips speaking elements that should not be read, including footnote superscripts (the <code>sup</code> element).</li>
<li>Pauses of different length added are between headings versus paragraphs.</li>
<li>Controls remain in view during playback, with each the current text being spoken persistently being scrolled into view. (Requires browser support for <code>position:sticky</code>.)</li>
<li>Back/forward controls allow you to skip to the next paragraph; when not speaking, the next paragraph to read will be selected entirely.</li>
<li>Select text to read from that point; click on text during speech to immediately change position.</li>
<li>Multi-lingual support, allowing embedded text with <code>[lang]</code> attribute to be spoken by the appropriate voice (assuming the user has it installed).</li>
<li>Settings for changing the default voice (for each language), along with settings for the rate of speech and its pitch. (Not supported by all engines.) Changes can be made while speaking.</li>
<li>Hit escape to pause during playback.</li>
<li>Voice preferences are persistently stored in <code>localStorage</code>, with changes synced across windows (of a given site).</li>
<li>Ability to use JS in standalone manner (such as in bookmarklet).</li>
<li>Known to work in the latest desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. (Tested on OSX.) It does not work reliably in mobile/touch browsers on Android or iOS, apparently due both to the (still experimental) <code>speechSynthesis</code> API not being implemented well enough on those systems and/or programmatic range selection does not work the same way as on desktop. For these reasons, the functionality is disabled by default on mobile operating systems.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://westonruter.github.io/spoken-word/test/example.html" rel="nofollow ugc">Try it out</a> on standalone example with some test content.</p>
<h4>Theme Config</h4>
<p>The settings for Spoken Word are presented in an HTML5 <code>dialog</code> element. For browsers that do not yet support this feature, the plugin bundles the <a href="https://github.com/GoogleChrome/dialog-polyfill" rel="nofollow ugc">dialog-polyfill</a>. The polyfill is only included if it is detected the browser does not support <code>dialog</code> natively. The inclusion of the polyfill can be disabled by adding the following to your theme or plugin:</p>
<pre>
add_filter( 'spoken_word_include_dialog_polyfill', '__return_false' );
</pre>
<p>For themes that have a sticky header (such as the nav menu in Twenty Seventeen) you may need to add some additional CSS to ensure that the sticky-positioned playback controls do not get hidden behind the sticky header. For example in Twenty Seventeen, you can add the following to the Custom CSS in the Customizer:</p>
<pre>
@media screen and (min-width: 782px) {
    body:not(.admin-bar) .spoken-word--active {
        top: calc( 0.5em + 70px );
    }
    body.admin-bar .spoken-word--active {
        top: calc( 0.5em + 32px + 70px );
    }
}
</pre>
<h4>Internals</h4>
<p>A bookmarklet can be used to load the Spoken Word functionality into any site, even non-WordPress sites where the plugin is not installed. The key is to use the appropriate <code>contentSelector</code>:</p>
<pre>
( () => {
    const link = document.createElement( 'link' );
    link.rel = 'stylesheet';
    link.href = 'https://unpkg.com/spoken-word/css/style.css';
    document.head.appendChild( link );

    const script = document.createElement( 'script' );
    script.src = 'https://unpkg.com/spoken-word/dist/spoken-word.js';
    script.addEventListener( 'load', () => {
        spokenWord.initialize( {
            contentSelector: [ /* 👈 Amend as desired. */
                '.hentry',
                '.entry-content',
                '.h-entry',
                '.e-content',
                '[itemprop="articleBody"]',
            ].join( ', ' )
        } );
    } );
    document.head.appendChild( script );
} )();
</pre>
<p>The <code>spokenWord.initialize()</code> function takes an object as its argument which can have the following properties:</p>
<pre>
 * @param {string}  contentSelector         - CSS Selector to find the elements for speaking.
 * @param {Element} rootElement             - Root element within which to look for content.
 * @param {Object}  chunkifyOptions         - Options passed into chunkify.
 * @param {boolean} useDashicons            - Whether to use Dashicons.
 * @param {Object}  defaultUtteranceOptions - Default utterance options when none are supplied from localStorage.
</pre>
<p>The dialog and the controls are rendered using <a href="https://preactjs.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Preact</a>. For a list of all the modules used by this plugin, see the <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/spoken-word/blob/master/package.json" rel="nofollow ugc">package.json</a>.</p>
<p>This plugin is <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/spoken-word" rel="nofollow ugc">developed on GitHub</a> where the source can be viewed. Please <a href="https://github.com/westonruter/spoken-word/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">report issues</a> there. Pull requests welcome. The <code>spoken-word</code> package is also <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/spoken-word" rel="nofollow ugc">published on npm</a>.</p>


Spoken Word

Add text-to-speech (TTS) to content, with playback controls, read-along highlighting, multi-lingual support, and settings for rate, pitch, and voice.

Listenability vs Spoken Word