New on CTAN: SpeLaTeX
SpeLaTeX is a new package that tries to improve the accessability of PDF files by equipping the PDF that is generated with LaTeX with hyperlinks to audio files that contain the spoken equivalent of the original text, equations, figures and tables. The spelatex package is a part of SpeLbox, consisting (next to the spelatex package) of an Org-mode exporter (not yet available, will be released soon) and a Perl module SpeL::Wizard that contains a script (spel-wizard.pl) to convert LaTeX constructs (including mathematical equations) into proper language to further convert it to audio files using text-to-speech software/services.
The package’s Catalogue entry can be viewed at https://ctan.org/pkg/spelatex The package’s files themselves can be inspected at https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/spelatex/
Thanks for the upload. For the CTAN Team Petra Rübe-Pugliese
CTAN is run entirely by volunteers and supported by TeX user groups. Please join a user group or donate to one, see https://ctan.org/lugs
SpeLaTeX – Create PDF documents with hyperlinks to audiofragments
This package equips the PDF that is generated with LaTeX with hyperlinks to audio files that contain the spoken equivalent of the original text, equations, figures and tables.
The audio files can be automatically generated using a Perl-script called spel-wizard.pl (part of the SpeL::Wizard module available on CPAN). This script interfaces with locally installed text-to-speech software or with online available (paying) cloud services to generate the audio files. To this end, the LaTeX chunks of your text are parsed and translated to “natural language”.
SpeLaTeX is babel-enabled such that your text is read with the correct pronunciation corresponding to your language. So far, it provides the languages English and Dutch, but it will be extended in the future.
You can package your PDF together with the audio-files (in your favorite archive format) and make it available to your users, such that the only requirements to read your text and listen to the audio are a suited PDF reader and media player.
For the text-to-speech conversion, one can use free options (festival, balabolka, ...) or paying services (e.g. AWS polly).
| Package | SpeLaTeX |
| Version | 0.93 2024-10-23 |
| Copyright | 2024 Walter Daems and Paul Levrie |
| Maintainer | Walter Daems |