Generating DAISY books from OpenOffice.org

Abstract

odt2daisy is an open-source extension for OpenOffice.org Writer that converts word processing files into digital talking books in the DAISY format (ANSI/NISO Z39.86). odt2daisy produces Full DAISY 3 (text synchronised with audio), DAISY 3 XML (text without audio) and Full DAISY 2.02 (for compatibility with older DAISY players). The extension also supports mathematical content (MathML). odt2daisy works on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. For the production of audio, odt2daisy relies on the DAISY Pipeline Lite, an open-source software developed by the DAISY Consortium, the LAME MP3 encoding technology, and the operating system's text-to-speech (TTS) engine(s). The supported languages depend on the TTS engines available on the user's system. On Unix-based systems odt2daisy relies on the open-source eSpeak TTS engine, which supports 27 languages. odt2daisy enables the production of DAISY books with only open-source software. Vincent Spiewak started working on odt2daisy at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France) and continued the work at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Leuven, Belgium) in the framework of ÆGIS, a research and development project co-financed by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.