At 06:10 AM 4/22/2006, you wrote: >I've added the ability to indicate punctuation and capital letters in >the text by either speaking their name, or by playing a sound. > >I'm not sure whether what I've done is exactly what's wanted, so if >anyone wants to try it and let me know of suggestions for improvements, >please do so. > >eSpeak text-to-speech is at: > http://espeak.sourceforge.net > >download the file: test-1.09d-linux.zip > >The ReadMe file inside gives the details. It can speak either all >punctuation or just a specified set of punctuation characters. It can >speak their names, or you can set up sound files (sound icons) to be >played instead. > >Capital letters can be indicated by a sound, or by the word "capital", >or by raising the pitch of the capitalized word. > >Also the feature of embedding commands within the text has been updated. > >Questions which I'm unsure about: > >1. Should end-of-line be indicated? Do you mean like when the end of a line is reached, the speech synthesizer says something when wrapping to the next line? If this is the case, then no. Just have it continue reading the text. I prefer not to have even a pause at the end of a line; just smoothly continue reading. >2. What about apostrophes within words. Currently these are not >indicated when speaking text since that would disrupt the pronunciation >of the word. This should be optional. Some may like it for proof reading. >3. The punctuation name is spoken in a slightly different tone from >the main text, to differentiate it. Is that OK? If you mean it says "period", "comma" in a different tone, that's fine. I have never heard of this before but it may be useful. Perhaps it should be optional. >4. The actual names for punctuation characters are defined in the >data/english_list file, so these can be changed if needed (then do >speak --compile). This is a good thing. >5. If the text is spoken at a fast rate, should the sound icons also >be shortened in duration? > >6. What is the best value for the pitch raise which indicates >capitals? This is currently adjustable with the -k option to allow >experimentation. I would just keep it adjustable. >7. How should multiple capitals in a word be indicated? Or a capital >which is not the first character of a word? Or does that only need to >be considered when speaking letters individually (spelling)? Usually, we only wish to hear if a letter is capitalised if we are reviewing the word; not when listening to, let's say, a story or something. >8. Have I misunderstood the whole point of this, and punctuation and >capital indications are only needed when spelling out individual >characters? > >Again, some may like it for proof reading but, when listening to a >file, for smooth reading, we do not wish to hear all of the >punctuation stuff. It should probably be an adjustable mode. I will download and try the latest version when time permits. Thanks for the improvements. >_______________________________________________ >Speakup mailing list >Speakup at braille.uwo.ca >http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
