This is a plugin for Pidgin-IM which can be used to automatically read incoming messages via an installed TTS (text-to-speech) application.

The program

• is tested on Linux only (and will probably not compile elsewhere)
• is designed for use with the espeak program. I don't know which other TTS applications it may support

First you'll need pidgin installed with all dependencies.

Then install the espeak utlity.

Then install pidgin's build tools, which are pidgin-dev and libpurple-dev for Ubuntu/Debian systems or pidgin-devel and libpurple-devel for CentOS/Arch Linux.

Build and install the plugin with the commands:

make && make install

This will compile the code and - in a second step - copy generated shared object to your ~/.purple/plugins/ directory. Afterwards you have to enable the plugin in your Pidgin options.

The plugin is controlled from within the message window. All commands are prefixed by /tts. For example

/tts on
/tts off

will globally turn the plugin on/off. The buddy on/off commands allow to control only the current conversation.

The status command logs the current status into the conversation window.

You might also be interested in controlling the language and volume

/tts volume 100
/tts lang de

Note that the volume must be a number between 0 and 200. You can find possible values for the language by typing espeak --voices in your shell.

Advanced configuration can be understood by looking at the source code.