Re: catalog of ESpeak TTS server issues

["Robert D. Crawford" <rdc1x@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Brannon <cmbrannon@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Here are some of the usability issues we've discussed.  Initials in parens
> indicate the person who first described the issue.
> RDC = Robert Crawford, CMB = Chris Brannon, and LL = Lukas Loehrer.

I am more than happy to help test whatever is done.  My programming
skills are practically non-existent, but I can test and describe
problems and such.  Another bonus is that I can see a bit.  This came in
handy for the following new problem:

Something dies.  Without knowing what to check and how to differentiate
between what is the server and what is the engine, I can't tell what.
Here is what has happened.  I send a whole page of text to be read.
Somewhere it stopped speaking, amount of text being sent and the place
in the text it stopps seems to be random.  After it dies, moving point
around doesn't produce any output.  Restarting the server fixes the
problem until it happens again.  The amount of time between server
restarts and dying also seems to be random.  If I hadn't been able to
see a little, I would have never known that the page wasn't finished.  

> 1. Character echo may be unusable.  (RDC).
> 2. Sometimes ESpeak fails to speak a line when moving point to that line (RDC).
> 3. Voices with richness = 0 are silent (RDC).
> 4. Occasional stutter when using word echo (CMB).

I'll add to this that it also happens in other cases than what you
described.  If you hit C-g, does it do it there as well?  

> 
> 5. ESpeak can get confused about voice parameters.  (CMB) 
> 6. Pauses around punctuation disturb the flow of speech.  Reading
> source code is difficult (LL).
>
> I'm not sure what causes 1, 2, and 4.
> 3, 5, and 6 are fixable.
>
> Fix 3: ESpeak doesn't offer a richness parameter, so Emacspeak translates
> richness to volume.
> That is fine.  ESpeak allows volumes in the range 0 to 230, where 0
> is absolute silence.  Any setting under 50 or 60 is practically inaudible,
> IMHO.  When translating richness to volume, there should be
> a minimum acceptable volume.  I would say that the minimum should be
> approximately 65.

This, I believe can be taken care of in
emacspeak/lisp/espeak-voices.el.  Perhaps I can dig into this file and
remember what I was doing in outloud-voices.el a long while back.  

As I said before, I'll do what I can with my limited abilities.  Just
let me know what I can do.

Thanks,
rdc
-- 
Robert D. Crawford                                      rdc1x@xxxxxxxxxxx

  Christ was born in 4 B.C.

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