ZoTTS - Text To Speech plugin

Hello Zotero Community,
I recently came across a a GitHub repopository for a future Text-to-Speech (TTS) plugin for Zotero, called “ZoTTS”. This plugin aims to add TTS functionality to the Zotero PDF viewer.

TTS in Zotero has been requested both here on the forum and elsewhere online several times over a number of years. If one day this plugin is finished and available, it will be a big step in the right direction towards a more accessible Zotero for dyslexics, autistics, people with ADHD, and others with reading difficulties.

I have no affiliation with the creator of this plugin, but I believe that a TTS plugin will be a valuable addition to our Zotero toolkit. I thought it would be worth sharing with the community.

I don't know programming and unfortunately have little to contribute, but maybe there is someone here who can and wants to? Any feedback or suggestions can be directed to the plugin’s GitHub repository/ creator for the developer(s) to review.

As far as I can see, it's Ben Jaeger (ImperialSquid) who is the creator. (https://github.com/ImperialSquid)

Repository URL: https://github.com/ImperialSquid/zotero-zotts


Best, Sondre Bogen-Straume
  • Hi all,
    I'm not a programmer either, unfortunately, but I just want to join in encouraging anyone who is able to contribute to consider working on this project! It would help me a lot with reading. Having speech move along at a certain pace instead of my reading, which I can stop and ponder one point for hours down a rabbit hole, much increases the chances I will get to the end of any text.
  • Hi everyone,
    I am also not a programmer, but I do have ADHD, so I also encouraging anyone who is willing to work on this project. this kind of extension can improve my working life tremendously.
  • +1 on this thread, and a PDF to speech! I also have ADHD and audiobooks / podcasts are a game changer for me in terms of learning material, obviously some tradeoffs in terms of figures but fantastic for traversing content to then learn in more depth.

    Bonus points, if the designed add on could have a function where you can press a button (preferably one that you can link to say an earbud button) that then highlights the last paragraph or 2 sentences of text (or the last x seconds of text) and then lets you record up to 30 seconds of your voice which is then converted to text and put in the highlighted section as a note.

    This would be an amazing way to go through academic papers and would allow me to do a decent portion of my PhD while mountain biking, which seems like a great way to do part of my PhD.
  • edited June 7, 2024
    I think it would be great if the functionality was added in PDF.js (as far as I understand, Zotero is built using that same PDF viewer component as Firefox), rather than just a plugin for our favorite reference management tool.
  • edited June 12, 2024
    Quick heads up about Ben Jaeger's plugin.
    I spent an hour trying to get it built (I'm no programmer either) and in its current state may not be entirely safe:

    "high-severity vulnerability in pdfjs-dist can potentially lead to arbitrary JavaScript execution upon opening a malicious PDF."

    So if you're like me and want to download / compile, you may want to wait for further development.

  • glad to hear that, thank you for taking on yourself this project. update us on your progress.
  • another neurodivergent zotero user adding a +1 to this. would be fantastic.
  • @sstraume97 @vulpesegno @ittai.rivkin @aborel @thoreaubakker @adorbul

    Just dropping a comment to ZoTTS is finally done! https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/116141/announcing-zotts-a-text-to-speech-plugin-for-zotero

    ---

    @thoreaubakker that particular error was due to packages I was using, not my code, the current versions (of my code and others) has eliminated all vulnerabilities, you can use ZoTTS without any fear!

    Can't @ them, but if you see this Ross, I've made a note of your requests!
  • @Imperial_Squid I thought the other commenter was making quite the ask in terms of functionality but I am very excited that you made note of it!
  • OMG this is a godsend! Thanks for posting! :-)
  • @sstraume97 is this for Windows or Mac?
  • @soyeonlee4 hi, creator of ZoTTS here!

    The plugin should work on any platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) out of the box!

    If you have any issues you're very welcome to open an issue on the GitHub repo and I'll see what I can do to help.
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