lego

README

lego

lego - "I read" in Latin.

Also, lego is a lightweight CLI utility that can:

• synthesize audiobooks from .txt files and bind them into .m4b books with chapters and (optional) cover;
• translate EPUB books from one language to another.

Installing and running lego

Assuming you have Go installed, run go install github.com/beauxarts/lego and you'll get lego binary in your $GOPATH/bin.

Synthesizing audiobooks with lego

Lego allows a choice of local and cloud neural voices supported by providers in https://github.com/beauxarts/tts_integration:

• acs - Azure Cognitive Services Text to Speech
• gcp - Google Cloud Text to Speech
• say - (macOS only) any locally installed voices supported by the 'say' command

Getting the list of supported voices

Run the following command:

lego voices -locale LOCALE -provider PROVIDER [additional provider specific parameters]

Additional parameters for gcp provider:

• key-file or key-value - path to a file containing secret key or literal key value

Additional parameters for acs provider:

• key-file or key-value - path to a file containing secret key or literal key value
• region - ACS region for your resource (e.g. eastus)

Creating an audiobook

Run the following command:

lego create-audiobook -text-filename PATH-TO-TXT-FILE -output-directory PATH-TO-DIRECTORY -provider PROVIDER [provider specific parameters] -voice-params [name, locale, gender] -title TITLE -author AUTHOR -cover-filename PATH-TO-COVER-IMAGE

lego uses divido to break down text files into chapters and paragraphs. Basically the chapter title is separated from paragraphs by at least 3 new lines, and everything with less new lines separators are paragraphs under that chapter. That seems to match text files converted by calibre from EPUB. You can validate chapters with lego info command.

Creating audiobook requires ffmpeg to bind individual audio files into a single .mp4 file. Optionally, if cover image is provided, mp4art (included in the mp4v2 tools) is needed. In most cases you don't need to specify the path to those binaries, however you can with the ffmpeg-cmd and mp4art-cmd parameters.

Optionally, you can provide all audiobook metadata in a single text file in wits format. The most important metadata parameters are author and title, which you can also specify with parameters. Note: lego can use metadata exported by fedorov.

Note: lego synthesis can be interrupted and continued. When restarting synthesis existing files will be skipped (to avoid paying unnecessary costs). You can force overwriting with an overwrite parameter.

Other audiobook creation commands

create-audiobook is a sequence of individual command that you can use individually. You can use lego help COMMAND to learn more about each command.

Most users don't need that and would be better served by create-audiobook command.

Translating EPUBs with lego

Lego allows a choice of cloud neural translation models supported by providers in https://github.com/beauxarts/polyglot:

• acs - Azure Cognitive Services Text to Speech
• gcp - Google Cloud Text to Speech

There doesn't seem to be a local translator available (at least on macOS). When one appears - I'm hoping to support it.

Getting the list of supported languages

Run the following command:

lego languages -language LANGUAGE -provider PROVIDER [additional provider specific parameters]

Additional parameters for gcp, acs providers:

• key-file or key-value - path to a file containing secret key or literal key value

Translating EPUB

Run the following command:

lego translate -filename PATH-TO-EPUB-FILE -provider PROVIDER [provider specific parameters] -from LANGUAGE -to LANGUAGE

lego will unpack EPUB into a temporary directory, translate each XHTML/HTML file in that folder and then pack EPUB back, so you'll get a new file with the target language suffix in the same location, where the original is. For example, when translating my_great_book.epub file into fr language, you'll get my_great_book_fr.epub as a result.

Note: lego translation can be interrupted and continued. When restarting translation already translated files (.xhtml.translated or .html.translated) will be skipped (to avoid paying unnecessary costs). If you want to redo those files - delete .translate files and run translate command again.