Problem with TTS when TTS engine doesn't support the language

[Éric Piel]

Hello,

I've just tried TTS-nl on my (Dutch) phone, and found out about this problem: if the TTS engine doesn't support the language, Osmand tries anyway. Listening to Dutch pronounced following the English rules is quite painful to the hears... and quite useless. It gives a bad impression to the user, and for the standard user it might be pretty hard to find out why some "weird language" is selected.

The problem is that there is no free TTS engine for Dutch. Unfortunately, that's not the case just for Dutch, but pretty much for any language other than the 10 most common languages of the world.

I'd like to suggest the following improvement. When selecting a TTS voice, check whether the language is available. If not, display a warning/dialog to the user explaining the problem and suggesting to:
 * download and activate the recorded voice for the same language
 * install a TTS engine which supports the language (could even have a link to the play store for searching "TTS" + language code)

Best,
Éric

[Harry van der Wolf]

I installed svox classic and bought the "SVOX Jan Dutch" on Google play.

I tested quite some tts engines which had a dutch voice which had a trial period. And the svox is by far the best, to my opinion.

google or pico tts with english or german (slightly less worse) is really horrible.

Harry

2013/12/1 Éric Piel <eric...@gmail.com>

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[Éric Piel]

On 02-12-13 10:58, Harry van der Wolf wrote:
> I installed svox classic and bought the "SVOX Jan Dutch" on Google play.
> I tested quite some tts engines which had a dutch voice which had a
> trial period. And the svox is by far the best, to my opinion.
> google or pico tts with english or german (slightly less worse) is
> really horrible.

Hi,
Yes, it's possible to find a TTS engine for Dutch if you look for it
(and pay) in the play store market. However, for an inexperienced user
who gets a brand new phone in Dutch, it's really weird that Osmand uses
the English TTS to try to pronounce Dutch. That's why I'd recommend to
detect such case, and display a warning.

I've actually seen a couple of complains on the play store (in Dutch)
that the TTS nl doesn't work. That's probably due to this problem.

Éric

[Harry van der Wolf]

There is no tts for Dutch in Android. There is only a tts for 6 languages (EN, GE, FR, IT, ES, PO).

It means that many, many countries don't have a tts.

The tts engine of Google translate on the web by now has 35+ languages. Maybe that will come to android one day?

Harry

2013/12/2 Éric Piel <eric...@tremplin-utc.net>

Éric

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[Rodolfo]

If Osmand tried to detect and warn you for all Android problems, the app would be a lot bigger, so there would be an increasing number of users in a situation like Nico's.
See his post (today) at https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups&hl=en#!topic/osmand/ooaRu-qd-RQ

The increased "memory hunger" also has a lot to do with the change of libraries to enable the development for other OS platforms. I guess this change cannot be undone now and developing with two different library systems would cause a lot of extra work.
I think, even an "Osmand Lite" version would be quite big if it was developed with the current tools.
So, basically, we are expected to show solidarity with iPhone and Windows Phone users, who are eagerly awaiting their Osmand...
If I talk nonsense, Victor, please correct me :)

[Max]

The increased "memory hunger" also has a lot to do with the change of libraries to enable the development for other OS platforms.

No.
 

I guess this change cannot be undone now and developing with two different library systems would cause a lot of extra work.

 

There are two different libraries (old core and new core), only old core is working and is used for current releases.

Regards,
Max