Converting text to mp3

[Linux for blind general discussion]

DECTalk hardware is by definition text-to speech technology, as it takes 
marked up text, but can also take text without any markup, and it 
converts it to audible speech. It in fact does exactly what a software 
speech synthesizer does, but it does it over a cable instead of via a 
virtual cable, pipe or library of functions. In fact, DECTalk once was a 
software speech synthesizer that sounded almost exactly like the 
hardware, as it was most likely the same software internal code of the 
hardware adapted to be able to use the hardware found in a PC. In fact, 
if you can still find this old DECTalk software, as I recall, it was 
able to take your text and create .wav files in much the same way that 
newer software speech synthesizers can do now. I know that people were 
making it sing, not by recording their hardware, but by making and 
mixing .wav files produced by the software. And any .wav file can be 
converted to mp3 using lame, which is one possible answer to the thread 
starter's question.

~Kyle