Re: [orca-list] Verbalized punctuation (was Re: more than one blank space arenot recognizedin thunderbird)

[Paul Hunt <huntp ukonline co uk>]

thanks for the hack to cut down on the full stops!

I'm a bit confused though.  How does the "break speech into chunks 
between pauses" checkbox fit into this?

Doesn't this control whether or not Orca inserts punctuation symbols in 
order to create pauses that break up what it says into logical blocks?

If so, I would expect that unchecking it would stop the additional 
punctuation symbols being spoken.

However, id doesn't.  So what does it do?

Paul

On 13/08/09 16:58, Willie Walker wrote:
> Added as RFE http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=591709 so we 
> don't lose track.
>
> Willie Walker wrote:
> > > However this isn't Thunderbird specific and indeed, Orca is throwing 
> > > in full stops all over the place with punctuation set to all.  I get 
> > > them when bringing up menus, on button labels... and all over the 
> > > place where none exist.
> > >
> > > Something wrong here...
> >
> > The verbalized punctuation in Orca comes in after Orca has built up 
> > the string to send to the synthesis engine.  Thus, if Orca inserts a 
> > '.' when building up a string, it will be verbalized if the user has 
> > requested the relevant punctuation level.
> >
> > Orca adds the '.' character to help with the prosody/pacing of spoken 
> > output as well as the fundamental pitch contour.  In this cycle, we 
> > added the '.' character to the end of mnemonics because we had a 
> > complaint: without it, the pitch of the character being spoken was 
> > incorrect and causing confusion.
> >
> > If you'd like, you can disable the injection of the '.' character by 
> > adding the following lines to your ~/.orca/user-settings.py or 
> > ~/.orca/orca-customizations.py file:
> >
> > import orca.speech_generator
> > orca.speech_generator.PAUSE = []
> >
> > Depending upon your personal preferences and how your specific speech 
> > engine behaves, you may or may not like the resulting speech.
> >
> > In any case, we have a dilemma.  One of the best ways to get good 
> > prosody is to tell the speech engine where phrases start and end by 
> > using punctuation.  Verbalized punctuation is something that most 
> > people agree should be as low in the stack as possible.  At the same 
> > time, you have introduced a suggestion that verbalized punctuation 
> > should only apply to text from the application.
> >
> > For the next cycle (i.e., 2.29.x), we could potentially try to devise 
> > something that allows us to distinguish between the text that Orca 
> > has generated (including punctuation) and the text that has come from 
> > the application.  We could then selectively apply the various 
> > filters, such as verbalized punctuation, to the strings.  This, of 
> > course, assumes that the next generation speech system, which is what 
> > Luke Yelavich at Canonical is working on, allows us to have this kind 
> > of control.
> >
> > Will
> >
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> > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> > The manual is at 
> > http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> > The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
> > Netiquette Guidelines are at 
> > http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines