[arm-allstar] modifying write-node-callsigns script

[Patrick Perdue]

Hi:

I've been toying with the idea of making a modified write-node-callsigns 
script, using an up-to-date astdb.txt as the source, but on a machine 
not running HamVoIP, using a Mac to generate the TTS clips. However, 
instead of concatenating existing GSM or ulaw files, I want to have it 
say the entire text string of the callsign field with a space between 
each character, so that TTS weirdness doesn't happen. I'm already using 
a bash script on a Mac to generate replacement sound packs for HamVoIP 
(more on that in the future.) In the name of efficiency, I would like to 
have callsigns spoken at a single utterance. I'm not the most well 
versed shell scripter around, so just looking for ideas of how to go 
about formatting a text string in this way, which can then be fed to the 
say command, then SoX to convert to ulaw as <node_number>.ul. The rest I 
think I can handle.

This may be a little overkill, but as a daily TTS user, I thought it 
would be a nice touch, especially considering the availability of TTS 
voices of Mac OS is greater than what is generally available in Linux.

Also, the sound packs I've generated so far use ulaw, as it sounds 
considerably better than GSM. Thus, I have to do a batch find/replace on 
the HamVoIP scripts that specifically look for .gsm files. I'll probably 
make both GSM and ULAW versions of these sound packs available when I 
smooth some things out, and perhaps even a test in the scripts to use 
either GSM or ULAW, depending on what is available, rather than only 
assuming GSM.