TTS bug

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by curstpriest

And it is really not true that TTS as a technology is not good. Quality TTS engines exist (I have used AT&T natural voice engine, as well as others that use context prediction to calculate inflection and reduce mispronunciations, and they do an incredible job. This technology is pretty old too, atleast 5 if not 10 or more years...

Entirely agree with you curstpriest. There are some excellent TTS engines out there, and every year they get better - more accurate, and better voices. I'm sure it's just that the TTS engine on the Kindle is a fairly basic one, with little in the way of contextual analysis to enable it to determine if, for example, "Dr." should be "Doctor" or "Drive". I just tried TTS on my Kindle again, after upgrading to firmware version 3.1, and it has definitely improved. On my Kindle, it used to ignore periods/full stops, but now it pauses at them, and the voice inflexion is correct for the end of a sentence. Huge improvement on what it was like before!

[DreamWriter]

Donna, I use TTS quite a bit and I haven't noticed that TTS ignores periods. It also uses correct voice inflexion at the end of sentences--most of the time, anyway. It does mispronounce certain words, of course, and it also proceeds too fast after the end of titles, where a pause would be appropriate. I'm still using firmware version 3.0.3. I was just curious if you were using a version earlier than 3.0.3 prior to the upgrade to 3.1.

[DMSmillie]

I can't remember exactly, but I think the last time I tried TTS was with either 3.0.1 or 3.0.2. Very silly of me, but I can't remember now if I tried it with 3.0.3. It's quite possible I didn't, so the problem I was having might have been sorted in that version. Having said that, I haven't seen anyone else reporting the same issue of the Kindle TTS ignoring periods, with any version of the firmware, so I don't know if it was a glitch on my Kindle only. I do know I tried it with several different books, in case it was something weird about one particular book, but I found my Kindle did it with every book I tried.

[DMSmillie]

Just to illustrate what my Kindle was doing previously when I tried TTS, it would have read your (DreamWriter's) previous post as if it was punctuated as follows:

Donna.
I use TTS quite a bit and I haven't noticed that TTS ignores periods it also uses correct voice inflexion at the end of sentences most of the time.
Anyway it does mispronounce certain words.
Of course.
And it also proceeds too fast after the end of titles.
Where a pause would be appropriate I'm still using firmware version 3.0.3 I was just curious if you were using a version earlier than 3.0.3 prior to the upgrade to 3.1

Kind of hard to follow if you're not viewing the text as it reads it out.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

I can't remember exactly, but I think the last time I tried TTS was with either 3.0.1 or 3.0.2. Very silly of me, but I can't remember now if I tried it with 3.0.3. It's quite possible I didn't, so the problem I was having might have been sorted in that version. Having said that, I haven't seen anyone else reporting the same issue of the Kindle TTS ignoring periods, with any version of the firmware, so I don't know if it was a glitch on my Kindle only. I do know I tried it with several different books, in case it was something weird about one particular book, but I found my Kindle did it with every book I tried.

I never upgraded to 3.03 either, so that explanation makes sense.

Here's a test, though: With the 3.1 update, mine now pauses at periods, but it still doesn't pause for exclamation points or question marks.

So...

"How do you know?"
"I was there."

Sounds like:

"How do you know I was there."

It can definitely make for some confusion.

So you yours still ignore !s and ?s too?


Otherwise, I'm so happy to have TTS at all, the pronunciation quirks don't bother me.

[janvanmaar]

I am on 3.0.3 and I can confirm that it suffers by the issue Piper_ mentions but not the issue that DMSmillie mentions. More precisely, it ignores dots (but also other ends of sentences) if they are followed by quotation marks (I have not tried other symbols but I guess it would be the same).

[DreamWriter]

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

Just to illustrate what my Kindle was doing previously when I tried TTS, it would have read your (DreamWriter's) previous post as if it was punctuated as follows:

[snipped]

Kind of hard to follow if you're not viewing the text as it reads it out.

Thanks for the info.

As I was reading my earlier post the way you quoted it, imagining how TTS would voice it, I had to laugh out loud! I know what you're talking about. I'm glad that it's been fixed in 3.1!

Improvements in TTS may be one reason for me to upgrade, even though it seems like some things were fixed in version 3.0.3, which I'm currently using.

Piper, it is odd that they didn't insert proper pauses after exclamation and question marks. There's always a pause there in natural speech, and it doesn't seem like that would be difficult to incorporate into the TTS program.

I'm very happy to have TTS too! Even with its peculiarities, I enjoy having it as an option.

[DMSmillie]

I just put together a small test file to see how my Kindle handles exclamation and question marks, and found something interesting - it's when they're enclosed in quote marks that Kindle's TTS has problems with them.

With no quote marks, it treats the period like a period.
With quote marks around the sentence, the inflexion used is almost as if it's treating the period like a comma.

With no quote marks, it treats the exclamation mark like a period - no sense of emphasis or exclamation in the intonation, but at least it does treat it like the end of a sentence.
With quote marks around the sentence, it ignores the exclamation mark completely, running straight on into the following sentence.

With no quote marks, it treats the question mark like a question, with rising inflexion at the end of the sentence.
With quote marks around the sentence, it ignores the question mark, running straight on into the following sentence.

Test MOBI file attached for anyone who wants to check it out.

[DMSmillie]

Heheh! That's what happens when you take too long typing a post here - others sneak in while you're typing! Janvanmaar beat me to it re the issue with quotation marks.

[DreamWriter]

Well, I had noticed that sometimes TTS seemed better with question marks and exclamation points than at other times. The quotation marks seem to explain the inconsistency I've noticed.

Does version 3.1 still go too quickly from a chapter title to the text? It's not a big deal, but I always find that a bit disconcerting. I would prefer it to pause before starting the first paragraph after reading the chapter title. Instead, it just runs right into it with version 3.0.3!

[janvanmaar]

Heheh! That's what happens when you take too long typing a post here - others sneak in while you're typing! Janvanmaar beat me to it re the issue with quotation marks

Sorry for sneaking in Anyway, your test was certainly much more thorough
From your description, it looks like the behaviour was improved for dot+quotation mark but the rest seems to be the pretty much (exactly?) the same in 3.0.3 and 3.1...

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by DreamWriter

Does version 3.1 still go too quickly from a chapter title to the text? It's not a big deal, but I always find that a bit disconcerting. I would prefer it to pause before starting the first paragraph after reading the chapter title. Instead, it just runs right into it with version 3.0.3!

'Fraid it still does that, yes. It's not looking at heading/paragraph coding, or even "end of paragraph" markers - just punctuation. If titles were fully punctuated (i.e. ended in a period, for example), it would pause. The lack of punctuation at the end of most headings and titles means the TTS voice simply joins the title and first sentence together, unfortunately.

Originally Posted by janvanmaar

Sorry for sneaking in

Heh... I forgive you.

Originally Posted by janvanmaar

From your description, it looks like the behaviour was improved for dot+quotation mark but the rest seems to be the pretty much (exactly?) the same in 3.0.3 and 3.1...

Yes - comparing your and DreamWriter's descriptions of what you're getting with 3.0.3 to what my Kindle's doing with 3.1, that seems to be accurate.