eSpeak - added punctuation and capitals indications

[ace]

At 06:10 AM 4/22/2006, you wrote:
>I've added the ability to indicate punctuation and capital letters in
>the text by either speaking their name, or by playing a sound.
>
>I'm not sure whether what I've done is exactly what's wanted, so if
>anyone wants to try it and let me know of suggestions for improvements,
>please do so.
>
>eSpeak text-to-speech is at:
>    http://espeak.sourceforge.net
>
>download the file:  test-1.09d-linux.zip
>
>The ReadMe file inside gives the details.  It can speak either all
>punctuation or just a specified set of punctuation characters.  It can
>speak their names, or you can set up sound files (sound icons) to be
>played instead.
>
>Capital letters can be indicated by a sound, or by the word "capital",
>or by raising the pitch of the capitalized word.
>
>Also the feature of embedding commands within the text has been updated.
>
>Questions which I'm unsure about:
>
>1.  Should end-of-line be indicated?
Do you mean like when the end of a line is reached, the speech 
synthesizer says something when wrapping to the next line?  If this 
is the case, then no.  Just have it continue reading the text.  I 
prefer not to have even a pause at the end of a line; just smoothly 
continue reading.



>2.  What about apostrophes within words. Currently these are not
>indicated when speaking text since that would disrupt the pronunciation
>of the word.

This should be optional.  Some may like it for proof reading.


>3.  The punctuation name is spoken in a slightly different tone from
>the main text, to differentiate it.  Is that OK?

If you mean it says "period", "comma" in a different tone, that's 
fine.  I have never heard of this before but it may be 
useful.  Perhaps it should be optional.


>4.  The actual names for punctuation characters are defined in the
>data/english_list file, so these can be changed if needed (then do
>speak --compile).
This is a good thing.


>5.  If the text is spoken at a fast rate, should the sound icons also
>be shortened in duration?
>
>6.  What is the best value for the pitch raise which indicates
>capitals?  This is currently adjustable with the -k option to allow
>experimentation.
I would just keep it adjustable.


>7.  How should multiple capitals in a word be indicated?  Or a capital
>which is not the first character of a word?  Or does that only need to
>be considered when speaking letters individually (spelling)?
Usually, we only wish to hear if a letter is capitalised if we are 
reviewing the word; not when listening to, let's say, a story or something.


>8.  Have I misunderstood the whole point of this, and punctuation and
>capital indications are only needed when spelling out individual
>characters?
>
>Again, some may like it for proof reading but, when listening to a 
>file, for smooth reading, we do not wish to hear all of the 
>punctuation stuff.  It should probably be an adjustable mode.

I will download and try the latest version when time permits.  Thanks 
for the improvements.

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