Features/Global Text To Speech


Summary

When the user press Alt+Shift+S the currently selected text should be said by the computer.

Owner

Current status

  • Targeted release: 0.96
  • Last updated: 31 Jan 2012
  • Percentage of completion: 90%

Detailed Description

The feature add a service to provide text to speech, and a device in the frame to configure pitch and velocity. A already reserved alt-shift-s key stroke say the selected text in any activity.

The actual implementation does not add any new dependency, and a initial version has been sent to sugar-devel for review.

Thread in sugar-devel: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2011-November/034274.html

Old information:

This is information about old intents of implementing this feature. Is a different implementation, then is here only for reference.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Speech_Server

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Speech_synthesis

Tickets:

A GSOC project from Hemant Goyal worked in this area, related links:

  1. Google Summer of Code Logs ‐ http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=User:Hemant_goyal
  2. python‐dotconf – parser for the dot.conf configuration file ‐ http://code.google.com/p/python‐dotconf/
  3. pydotconf API documentation ‐ http://www.nsitonline.in/hemant/stuff/python‐dotconf/docs/
  4. speech‐dispatcher RPM packages for OLPC ‐ http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=6374
  5. python‐dotconf RPM packages for OLPC – http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=6527
  6. Patches for sugar ‐ http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/hemantgoyal/speech;a=summary
  7. speechd python API ‐ http://cvs.freebsoft.org/repository/speechd/src/python/speechd/client.py?view=markup
  8. Active dev.laptop.org TRAC tickets relevant to the project
    1. Inclusion of speech‐dispatcher packages ‐ http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7906
    2. Inclusion of python‐dotconf packages ‐ http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7907
    3. Integration of speech‐synthesis into Sugar ‐ http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7911
    4. Speech Device Icon Review ‐ http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7911
  9. Listen n Spell ‐ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Listen_and_Spell
  10. Read Etexts http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Read_Etexts

Benefit to Sugar

Text to speech is a good feature to kids, when they are learning to read, and to kids with disabilities.

This feature does not cover the more complex uses of text to speech, like multiple languages and word highlighting.

Scope

The change is isolated.

UI Design

I propose use de default language now, and only expose controls to set pitch and velocity. In a later change, we can implement have more than one language enabled, and a switch to change it.

The UI will be a device in the frame, with the needed controls in the palette.

 

How To Test

Features/Global Text To Speech/Testing

User Experience

Dependencies

We already include all the needed dependencies.

Contingency Plan

Documentation

Release Notes

Comments and Discussion