# Piper TUI

Piper TUI is an open-source, offline, and privacy-respecting Text-to-Speech (TTS) application for Linux desktop environments.
It acts as a wrapper and graphical interface (TUI/GUI) for the Piper TTS engine.

## Core Features
- **100% Offline Processing**: Audio generation runs purely on local hardware.
- **Global Keyboard Shortcut**: Users select text in any application (browser, PDF reader) and trigger playback via a custom shortcut.
- **Floating Control Widget**: Provides Play, Pause, and Stop capabilities without interrupting workflow.
- **Dynamic Voice Catalog**: Native integration with HuggingFace to download over 45 high-quality English and French voices directly.
- **Cross-DE Compatibility**: Supports GNOME, KDE Plasma, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, LXQt, and Pantheon.

## Installation
Recommended for end-users:
`curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elkwaet/piper-tui/main/net-install.sh | bash`

## Architecture
- **Language**: Python 3 (Main UI), Bash (Installation & core scripting).
- **UI Framework**: Textual (for the terminal user interface), Tkinter (for the floating playback control widget).
- **Audio Engine**: Piper TTS binary + `aplay` (ALSA).
- **State Management**: X11/Wayland clipboard tools (`xsel`, `wl-clipboard`) are used to capture user text selections securely.

## Repository
Source code is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/elkwaet/piper-tui