MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - KSpeak

notimp · 01-30-2017, 06:54 AM

I updated the PW3 to 5.8.7, now the azw2 file doesnt crash. So it was either a version dependency, or the update fixed some unknown issues that manifested themselves only in KSpeak not working..

KSpeak is very basic at the moment.

- Opening a text document located in a subfolder of /documents - that contained spaces and a hyphen in its filename didn't work (might also have been pathlength related).
- Canceling a TTS session is not yet implemented, when starting another one - the audio outputs just get layered over each other.
- (Re-?)Connecting the USB soundcard dongle while KSpeak is open results in the Kindle message popping up that tells you to set the Kindle to english, if you want to use TTS. Clicking that away (or clicking on it while a TTS session is still running?) results in the Kindle softlocking (KSpeak crashes). Turning the display off and on again - will get you out of the softlock (Kindle cant load KSpeak and exits you back to the menu) - but after about five seconds, the kindle will announce a reboot (because it noticed KSpeak crashing), and autoreboots if you don't cancel that process.

Rebooting with the audio dongle plugged in causes the Kindle to launch recovery (because of the usual mobileread recovery scripts), getting out of recovery is a hassle for people that don't know how (first exit listed on screen does nothing, normal exit bootloops, you have to find the right "exit and disable recovery" option) -

people without eyesight are locked out of their Kindles at that point, unplugging the USB device will not fix it (maybe it will in connection with a cold reboot, but afair, the reason the recovery is launching/boot looping is because a textfile gets created in user root, and that doesnt vanish), ...

There is no way to follow reading/text progression on screen (I didn't have the expectation, but just for people to know before purchasing a dongle), there is no way to selectively start the TTS at a certain point in a longer text, there is no way to stop TTS, once initialized, other then unplugging the dongle (and at that point the process might still run in the background - so at least I chose to reboot afterwards), ...

The german TTS is basically unusable for the purpose of having it read out long texts to you, ...
--

So thats KTerm from a user experience perspective.

Its still a neat thing to have - and it's great that it has been realized on the device - but from a usability perspective - don't get your hopes up.

I you NEED TTS to read long form texts to you - use an Android device, get the IVONA (now owned by Amazon) voices (free, but some of them have been depublished from the Play Store since the corporate takeover, but you can still get them at apkpure for example (you have to rename the container to .zip, unzip it and move the files to their proper locations in afair /Android/obb/)) - then use a program like FBReader (I'm using version 2.5.10 (because newer ones are "too dumbed down" for my purposes), and its TTS plugin to use Ivona voices to read epubs (that can come right out of the Android Dropbox app, but on't have to..

) -

Its free to set up, gives you the best TTS quality out there (imho, but as an educated statement, also Amy (UK english) is far better than the US english pendent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRUb_wlILBg ), once you tweak reading speed a little (possible in FBReaders TTS plugin) to make it faster. Saves reading progress, allows bookmarking - auto scrolls the text in parallel, and allows you to invert text colors, if you'd wan't to do that.

Also - as mentioned before, Amazons own Kindle PW3 TTS engine (english only) is unusable, because they decided to *peep* you on every page change. And that turns out to be EXTREMELY annoying after lets say page 3 or so....

So long story short - if you NEED good TTS functionality - buy an Android device.

01-30-2017, 06:54 AM	#30
notimp Addict Posts: 248 Karma: 892441 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: K2i	I updated the PW3 to 5.8.7, now the azw2 file doesnt crash. So it was either a version dependency, or the update fixed some unknown issues that manifested themselves only in KSpeak not working.. KSpeak is very basic at the moment. - Opening a text document located in a subfolder of /documents - that contained spaces and a hyphen in its filename didn't work (might also have been pathlength related). - Canceling a TTS session is not yet implemented, when starting another one - the audio outputs just get layered over each other. - (Re-?)Connecting the USB soundcard dongle while KSpeak is open results in the Kindle message popping up that tells you to set the Kindle to english, if you want to use TTS. Clicking that away (or clicking on it while a TTS session is still running?) results in the Kindle softlocking (KSpeak crashes). Turning the display off and on again - will get you out of the softlock (Kindle cant load KSpeak and exits you back to the menu) - but after about five seconds, the kindle will announce a reboot (because it noticed KSpeak crashing), and autoreboots if you don't cancel that process. Rebooting with the audio dongle plugged in causes the Kindle to launch recovery (because of the usual mobileread recovery scripts), getting out of recovery is a hassle for people that don't know how (first exit listed on screen does nothing, normal exit bootloops, you have to find the right "exit and disable recovery" option) - people without eyesight are locked out of their Kindles at that point, unplugging the USB device will not fix it (maybe it will in connection with a cold reboot, but afair, the reason the recovery is launching/boot looping is because a textfile gets created in user root, and that doesnt vanish), ... There is no way to follow reading/text progression on screen (I didn't have the expectation, but just for people to know before purchasing a dongle), there is no way to selectively start the TTS at a certain point in a longer text, there is no way to stop TTS, once initialized, other then unplugging the dongle (and at that point the process might still run in the background - so at least I chose to reboot afterwards), ... The german TTS is basically unusable for the purpose of having it read out long texts to you, ... -- So thats KTerm from a user experience perspective. Its still a neat thing to have - and it's great that it has been realized on the device - but from a usability perspective - don't get your hopes up. I you NEED TTS to read long form texts to you - use an Android device, get the IVONA (now owned by Amazon) voices (free, but some of them have been depublished from the Play Store since the corporate takeover, but you can still get them at apkpure for example (you have to rename the container to .zip, unzip it and move the files to their proper locations in afair /Android/obb/)) - then use a program like FBReader (I'm using version 2.5.10 (because newer ones are "too dumbed down" for my purposes), and its TTS plugin to use Ivona voices to read epubs (that can come right out of the Android Dropbox app, but on't have to.. ) - Its free to set up, gives you the best TTS quality out there (imho, but as an educated statement, also Amy (UK english) is far better than the US english pendent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRUb_wlILBg ), once you tweak reading speed a little (possible in FBReaders TTS plugin) to make it faster. Saves reading progress, allows bookmarking - auto scrolls the text in parallel, and allows you to invert text colors, if you'd wan't to do that. Also - as mentioned before, Amazons own Kindle PW3 TTS engine (english only) is unusable, because they decided to peep you on every page change. And that turns out to be EXTREMELY annoying after lets say page 3 or so.... So long story short - if you NEED good TTS functionality - buy an Android device. Last edited by notimp; 01-30-2017 at 07:06 AM.