But this is one thing I find confusing...at least for Linux.
tts is not a screen reader program.
One may incorporate a tts module into the workings of a screen reader
program, the way drivers were written to allow hardware synthesizers to
communicate with said program, but the tts itself is not going to, on its
own, manage things like responsiveness while typing and the like...and
that is before you talk of latency problem possibilities.
It is the screen reader program itself that, in my experience, takes care
of inflection, allowing the user to get more or less, same thing with
punctuation marks, pitch and speed.
If speak reader is strictly a tts, the company may not understand the
need for things like making sure the tts can follow activity and control
of the computer itself.
before writing this email I did a quick google using the phrase tts
defined?
with the first several options discussing how those with reading
challenges like dyslexia use tts to manage small blocks of words on the
screen with the recommended rate of 180 words per minute..or less.
It is, speaking personally, very unfortunate that some think a tts is a
screen reader program, when in reality they are different.
I have a friend who likes to use her amazon kindle to read fanfiction
aloud.
We have these discussions because my screen reader has no issue properly
pronouncing say the name of Ron Weasley from the harry Potter books, but
the Kindle tts cannot pronounce the word correctly at all.
Do not be surprised if you end up needing to demonstrate how your screen
reader, orca or speakup, does more than just read text, which for many is
the only purpose of a tts tool.
Does that make sense?
On Sat, 17 Apr 2021, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> The problem is that all the so called human voices are spliced together
> syllables and word fragments taped together. So you get emphasis on the
> wrong parts of the sentences, pauses in the wrong place, and stuff like
> that. If they would devote more machine learning time into proper text
> to
> speech rendering instead of sensorship and other nonsense, we might get
> somewhere.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2021 00:42:25 +0000
> Subject: Re: Formatting - was Would you be interested in having natural
> sounding TTS voices by Readspeaker on Linux? demo link included
>
> > Don't get me wrong, more natural sounding TTS with proper inflection
> > would be great, and for me, the holy grail would be TTS capable of
> > reading a digitized novel in real-time or reading subtitles on
> > foreign
> > media in real-time and be indistinguishable from a human cast
> > recording a audio dramatization or dubbed vocal track... but unless
> > there's been massive improvements in recent years I'm unaware of, the
> > natural voices are at that point where they almost sound human but
> > fail in a subtle but unsettling way that's hard to qualify, and until
> > we get over that hurdle, I'll take the obviously robotic monotone
> > over
> > the almost, but not quite, passes for a human reader voices for daily
> > work.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Blinux-list mailing list
> > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx
> > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> >
> >
>
>
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