First of all: even if you are not lucky enough to have a GNU/linux system, you should know that
many GNU utilities (gawk, grep, sed, sort, tar, gzip, gcc...) have been
ported to DOS: cf. www.gnu.org and DJ delorie software.
AWK. A powerful and simple
programming language to parse text files. Terrific for
analysing data or scanning databases. It is a standard Unix
tool, though I suggest you use the more powerful gawk. Versions
for DOS (16 bits and 32 bits) also exist: 16bits
version, 32bits
version. (more daring wannabe programmers should take a look at Perl)
GNUPLOT:
a great tool for plotting math functions or experimental data
(error bars available, output in postscript, latex, windows
metafile...).
GNU's
plotutils. command line plotting tools and library (output in
X, editable ps...)
|STAT. A
set of very handy data manipulation and statistical analysis
programs written by Gary Perlman.
PRAAT.
A "research, publication, and productivity tool for
phoneticians". This comprehensive speech analysis, synthesis, and
manipulation package includes general numerical and statistical
stuff, is built on a general-purpose GUI shell for handling
objects, and produces publication-quality graphics. By Paul
Boersma and David Weenink (U. Amsterdam).
MBROLA.
A high-quality speech synthesizer based on concatenation of
natural diphones. By Thierry Dutoit.
PIPEWAVE.
A set of C programs to perform various
operations on sound files.
AFsp.
This package provides several audio file utility programs and a
library of routines for reading and writing audio files. The
programs can be used to compare, copy, filter, resample, and play
audio files. There is also a program for generating noise and
programs for LPC analysis and synthesis.
SOX. A utility to convert between many
different sound file formats (.wav, .aiff, .au, .voc,
.snd...).(download it)
COOL EDIT. A simple and efficient sound file editor,
for Windows. Perfect for editing, but do not expect to
much from the spectral routines.
GHOSTSCRIPT &
GHOSTVIEW. These programs allow you to display postscript
(.ps) files on your pc, mac, or unix system. With them, it is
even possible to print postscript files on many different
types of non-postscript printers. The latest versions
allow you to print in pdf (not need for Acrobat)!
PSTOEDIT.
(Unix) translates PostScript and PDF graphics into other vector
formats.
IDRAW. (Unix) A graphical editor that alows to read and edit eps files (restricted postscript)
TEX & LATEX. Simply the best
typesetting tools for scientific works. Check out the
LaTeX Navigator and the Tex User Group site for more info.
GZIP. Gnu zip. performs a
better compression than pkzip. However, it compresses
only individual files (.gz). It is often used in
conjonction with tar. To decode a .tar.gz file: