Installing the Festival Speech Synthesis System with Mavericks

I am trying to install Festival onto my Macbook Pro running Mavericks. I tried installing it on my own, but that didn't work.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any up-to-date instructions out there on how to do this properly. There are these dated instructions from 2007, and these slightly less dated instructions from 2011, but neither worked for me.

When I download the 4 different packages I need and then try to use the less dated instruction set, I run into this error (along with some other warnings) with GCC 4.9:

../include/EST_String.h:576:16: error: friend declaration specifying a default
      argument must be a definition
    friend int fcompare(const EST_String &a, const EST_String &b, 
               ^
../include/EST_String.h:579:16: error: friend declaration specifying a default
      argument must be a definition
    friend int fcompare(const EST_String &a, const char *b, 

So I go into the source code and change the declarations where it sets const unsigned char *table=NULL within the function call and remove the =NULL. I then keep compiling and run into this error:

../include/EST_TIterator.h:292:7: error: no matching function for call to
      'begin'

Can someone provide a complete instruction set on how to install Festival onto a more recent version of OS X? I have Homebrew 0.9.5 if it helps.

Solution 1:

Here is an email reply I got from Rob Clark (one of the creators of Festival):

Use the speech_tools and Festival packages, then unpack and run make in each directory.

You will also need dictionary and voice packages from the standard download site. The festvox and festlex packages should be unpacked in the directory above festival (i.e. where you unpacked the festival package itself)

Regards. Rob Clark.

Since Rob responded to my email with in hours, feel free to contact him for more information if needed [email protected]

As mentioned in the comments, unpack the festvox and festlex packages with the command line, and not the Mac's default unpacking software.

Solution 2:

Following the release of Edinburgh Speech Tools 2.4 (on 12/25/2014), it's now possible to install that package through Homebrew:

$ brew install speech-tools

No formula for Festival itself yet, though.