Brainstorming about TTS settings

[Nolan Darilek]

As I prepare for another Spiel release, I examine and consider whether
or not to keep code. At the moment I'm thinking of dropping the
preferences for pitch/rate scale.

Basically, as implemented, these are very confusing and there's no way
around that. It'd be great if these were either a close-ended scale
(percentage of maximum) or some value with a fixed meaning (WPM for
rate.) As it stands, they are scales relative to the floating value of
whatever the user has the rate set to. So setting this value to 1.5 has
a different meaning depending on whether the user has the global rate
set to Slow or Very Fast, and that just makes the Baby <insert name of
iconic software developer here> cry.

I'd like to retain these, because I can see that someone might want to
set Spiel's TTS engine to a different one than that of the system, and
might want to adjust pitch and rate to compensate for how different
engines handle different values. But I'm removing them until there's a
sane way to implement this intention. Am I missing that sane way?

Or might there be interest in, say, changing the meaning of
setPitch/setRate to be absolute values? Or, failing that, add
setPitchAbsolute/setRateAbsolute in case there really is a use for this
insanity? :) Is anyone actually using these, given that they don't seem
particularly valuable as designed and have no predictable result?

[Kenny Hitthittsjunk@gmail.com]

Hi. I do use speech rate. In my experience, the scale isn't relative. For example, I set the rate to 2.0. That gives me a rate slightly faster than the very fast setting in tts settings. If I set spiel's rate scale to 1.0, speech will be very slow.
I have the default rate in tts settings set to "very fast".
I don't use pitch, but I'd like to see rate scale continue to be offered in spiel.

--
Sent from my Android 2.3 D2G with K-9 Mail.

[Nolan Darilek]

OK, so perhaps it isn't quite as insane as suspected. IIRC the docs for rate state something like "the normal value," but "normal" is a rather flexible word and might mean "normal for the engine" just as easily as "normal for the user's settings." :)

I'll keep them both around. Wish there was a better way to set them, though--a slider or something. For a slider to make sense, though, there have to be ends.

[Sina Bahram]

I'm forwarding this email to Bill Cox, creator of Sonic.

Website: www.SinaBahram.com
Twitter: @SinaBahram

[Nolan Darilek]

Why? What is Sonic? Hedgehog?

[Sina Bahram]

Oh, haha, sorry. Sonic is a nice library for speeding up text to speech. It exists for Android and Linux, etc.

Bill Cox is a great hacker who has put some stuff together, and I thought you guys could chat about this issue to see if there's
room for any kind of generalized solution.

[Mike Arrigo]

If it means anything, I would not miss it if these were removed. I set the voice I want to use in settings, and change it from there if I need to. I've also never used the pitch change feature, so it's fine with me if you remove it.