MicroslopSam/SCOPE.md

Scope

Goals

1. Synthesize speech with the MSTTS voices (Sam, Mary, Mike) on Linux.
2. Synthesize speech with the AT&T Flextalk 2.1 voices ("Keith Bell", "Kerry Watson") on Linux, through the same host.
3. Ship as a native Linux binary (Winelib first, pure-native later).
4. Keep the engine contract limited to what speech.h defines, so other SAPI4 engines can be added without host changes.
5. Text in, WAV out. Pitch and speed adjustable.

Approach

• Phase 1 (current): Winelib host + Wine-provided runtime. Fastest path to working audio, and it doubles as the reference oracle for later work.
• Phase 2: replace Wine-provided parts with own shims one at a time (file I/O, threads, OLE2, window/message pump, finally MSVC EH/SEH).
• Phase 3: pure-native rehost of msttssyn.dll; no Wine libraries.

Non-goals (for now)

• GUI, SAPI4 telephony (spchtel.dll), Voice Command (vcmd), Agent support.
• TruVoice voices (possible later; same L&H engine family).
• 64-bit build (the engines are 32-bit).
• Multi-platform audio (PipeWire/ALSA output comes after WAV works).