Re: [orca-list] Speech system shootout

[Tomas Cerha <cerha brailcom org>]

Nolan Darilek wrote:
> Gnome-speech with Speech-dispatcher: This seems a bit more responsive
> than my initial SD solution, and I find that I can type ahead of
> characters as they're speaking, which is refreshing. The first thing I
> encounter not working, though, is say all.

Yes, this is not supported by the driver and the driver itself is now
deprecated in favor of the direct SD backend (at least by its authors).

What surprises me is that you say it is more responsive then direct SD.
 It seems technically hardly possible to me.  Maybe it feels that way
just because of better speech canceling during typing.

> Native speech-dispatcher: This behaves the closest to what I'd expect a
> screen reader to do, though it has its quirks. Say all doesn't stop as
> happens with Gnome-speech+SD, nor is it interrupted by new text as is
> true with Gnome-speech+Espeak. Rather, new text gets inserted neatly
> into the flow, albeit sometimes not as immediately as I'd like. It's
> also very responsive for typingg. It has its quirks, though. I've
> noticed a commonality in both SD drivers in that there is a noticable
> pause for punctuation, even when none is spoken. For instance, run
> spd-say with the following test strings:
>
> "This is a test."
> This is a ( test ) ."

Well, I believe this is intended.  Punctuation is not read aloud, but
respected in the speech flow, similarly as a human would indicate
punctuation in natural speech.  Maybe the pauses are inadequately long
and you would like to be able to reduce them.  This is probably
configurable within the synthesizer.

> This part is obviously an SD issue, and I'm not immediately sure how to
> resolve it, other than to check whether all the contents of a string are
> beneath the punctuation threshold of the currently selected mode and are
> non-alphanumeric, and if so remove them from the string.

Yes, this basically is what Gnome Speech does, but this gives the
synthesizer no chance to control the intonation according to the
punctuation.  This may be particularly more important in languages other
than English.

> There are also other inconsistencies. " is "double quote" when typed, but
> "quotes" when backspaced over.  Some of the character names are just
> plain strange. ' is "quote", " is "quotes," but only when erased, see
> above. :) ( is "left bracket," [ is "left square," { is "left brace."
> Even after nine months of use, I still have to pause and ask myself
> which is which as this is inconsistent with every other speech system on
> every other OS I've used, and that isn't because each is inconsistent
> with the other. :)

Yes, the reason is that Speech Dispatcher leaves this up to the
synthesizer.  While this actually is a feature, I understand it is not
always good.  There are two ways to "fix" this feature:

   * Use the Orca controlled punctuation verbalization as suggested by
     http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440114

   * Fix the speech engine.  This may often be as simple as configuring
     the speech engine correctly.  With Espeak, for example, many
     Americans seem confused by its British punctuation names, but
     I believe there is an American English mode which should behave
     better and if there is still something you don't like, the Espeak
     author is usually very prompt at fixing it.  The inconsistency
     in keyboard echo and charecter review should definitely be fixed.

> The SD driver doesn't seem to stop as smoothly,
> either, and usually I have to find my place when concluding a read.
> Despite these quirks, though, I'd say that for an experimental driver,
> it is closest to what I'd expect from  a screen reader.

Ok, thank you for reporting it.

Best regards, Tomas