Speaking Notifications (KNotify)
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Speaking Notifications (KNotify)

KNotify is the notification subsystem within KDE, which alerts you to events you configure within the KDE system. You can configure KTTS to speak text notifications.

For example, Konversation, a KDE IRC application, permits you to configure a wide variety of notifications. For instance, you can tell Konversation to notify you whenever a message appears in an IRC channel with your nickname in it. Together with KTTS you can have KDE speak the text of the IRC message to you.

In general, if a KDE 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.

To enable KTTS to speak KNotify text notifications, start kttsmgr and click the Notifications tab. The Notifications screen appears.


The KDE Text-to-Speech Manager (Notification tab)

1

Check this box to enable speaking of KDE notifications. If unchecked, everything else on this screen is disabled and KTTS does not speak any notifications.

2

When checked, any application that sends an event with a sound will not be spoken by KTTS.

3

Use these buttons to add or delete application events from the list below. When you click the Add button, a screen appears in which you select the application and event you want to add to the list.

4

This event will speak the message Konversation sends when someone mentions your nickname in an Internet Relay Chat message.

5

For all other events coming from Konversation, no action will be taken in KTTS.

6

For all events not otherwise specified in the list, no action will be taken in KTTS.

7

Use this box to specify what KTTS should do when it receives an event. Your choices are:

Speak event name

Speaks the name of the event; what you see listed in the event list on this screen.

Speak the notification message

Speaks the message as it is sent from the application.

Do not speak the notification

Does not speak this event at all.

Speak custom text

Speaks the text you enter in the box to the right.

8

If the action is Speak custom text, enter the text of the message you would like spoken here. Within the message, you may use the following substitution strings:

%e

The name of the event

%a

The name of the application that sent the event

%m

The message the application sent

9

Test the message by clicking here.

10

You may specify the attributes of the desired talker to speak the notification message here. default will use the topmost talker listed in the Talkers screen. See the section called “Selecting Talkers (Advanced)”.

Notice there are three levels of events. If an action for a specific event of a specific application is specified, that action is taken. Otherwise, if an action for all other events of a specific application is specified, that action is taken. Otherwise, the action specified for all other events under Default (all other events) is taken.

The event all notifications for application Default (all other events) may not be deleted from the list. For the default all other events, you may specify the kind of notifications that are spoken, as follows:

none

None will be spoken.

notification dialogs

Notifications that display a dialog on your screen, that you must then dismiss, will be spoken.

passive popups

Notifications that display a passive dialog on your screen, that automatically disappear after a moment, will be spoken.

notification dialogs and passive popups

Notifications that display on screen, passively or not, will be spoken.

all notifications

All notifications, regardless of whether they produce a display on screen, will be spoken.

Tip

String Replacer filters are a good way to clean up messages sent from applications if they are mispronounced or misspoken in KTTS. The kmail.xml file, which comes with KTTS, is a good example. It removes br, and b tags from the KMail notification messages and also removes the phrase /local/inbox/, since this may be safely assumed in most cases. See the section called “Configuring String Replacer Filters”.

Use the Save button to save your notification settings to a file. Use the Load button to load saved settings from a file. The loaded events are merged with existing events in the list. If you want to start with an empty event list, click the Clear button first. All events except for all notifications will be erased.

Note

Be sure to click Apply or OK to save your settings.

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