Thanks to Brian and Luke for their help on this. Luke, yours works perfectly for me in all cases.


George

Giles,

          Your experience meshes with what I remember when playing with this a long while back.  Although screen readers definitely generate speech, they are not dedicated speech generating devices, and thus don't generally have capabilities for "the dramatic pause" built in. Admittedly, the need is relatively rare, but it would be nice if this could be done with ease.

--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

It’s hard waking up and realizing it’s not always black and white.

     ~ Kelley Boorn

 

I suspect it is synth-specific as to how much pause you get. I asked about something similar a couple of years ago (though can't find the question now) because I sometimes use NVDA to read poems that I have written but haven't memorised.

The only lengths of pause I can get with the two synth voices I use - SAPI5 Zira and Sapi5 Hazel - are the pause for a comma and the pause for a full stop / period. A semicolon seems to pause for the same length as a comma, and a dash doesn't pause at all.

I was hoping to find a way to combine pauses, such as a full stop followed by a comma to pause for a full stop and a half, or two full stops being double the length of one full stop ... but that just doesn't work!

when I did an audiobook of my first poetry pamphlet I went into a recording studio and recorded half of the poems read by me from memory, and the other half using SAPI5 Hazel. The benefit of doing that was, for the few times I wanted a bit extra pause, I could edit the mp3 file to insert an extra quarter or half second of pause. That sadly doesn't allow adjusting the pauses for real-time NVDA use.

I encountered a similar problem with a pair of Orcam glasses I used to own. They also pause for commas and pause longer for full stops, but that's as far as it goes.

Giles

Dear Soloman,
Just reviewed the list of available languages, and, unfortunately, there is no Tamil among them.
I came to the conclusion that the remote dictionary server I chose has a limited choice of available languages and we need to look for another similar service.
I hope to be able to change the remote dictionary used in future versions to a more advanced one.
Good luck!

Hi Ibrahim, Soloman, Gary, William and everyone who reads this message :)
Friends, I didn't take into account one detail, namely that the keyboard shortcut NVDA + D is already used in NVDA...
I'll see what a handy keyboard shortcut we can use and change it nearest time.

Ibrahim Abedrabbo wrote:
> Which languages does this dictionary cover? Is it only English-English, or English to other languages?
The online dictionary used in this add-on supports only about 27 languages. Coverage depends on the specific language selected.
For example, about 20 translation languages are available for English, but only one for Chinese...
A full list of supported language combinations I will provide at the end of this message.

Soloman wrote:
> Is there any chance of you getting it to work offline in future version?
This add-on simply sends requests to the remote server and with NVDA announces the result. Of course, we can modify the add-on so that it will works with the dictionary installed on your computer.
I'm going to look for available dictionary databases that could be installed locally and used in the add-on.

Gary Metzler wrote:
> I am having a problem trying to register the add on. I get the email with the code and I enter it but, when I go to next nothing happens.  Is there a step that I am missing?  Thanks for any help.
Gary, you don't need to immediately register your own remote dictionary access token to try the add-on.
When you install the add-on, it already has a previously registered access token and you can use it immediately. Until there are not many users of the add-on - this code will be available.
I will try to register another access token and see what problems may arise during the registration process.

William Wong wrote:
> Well, why not using request module  to send request to check dict meaning from some popular website?
William, I agree that it can be done this way. By the way, this add-on also uses the urllib.request module.
But it seems to me that using the API is much more convenient and reliable than parsing a web page.
Unfortunately it is really quite difficult to find quality API services with large free quotas.
For example, the following online dictionary service allows to perform only 300 queries per day [https://www.lexicala.com/k-dictionaries]...

List of language combinations available in the remote dictionary service:
    "be-be",
    "be-ru",
    "bg-ru",
    "cs-cs",
    "cs-en",
    "cs-ru",
    "da-en",
    "da-ru",
    "de-de",
    "de-en",
    "de-ru",
    "de-tr",
    "el-en",
    "el-ru",
    "en-cs",
    "en-da",
    "en-de",
    "en-el",
    "en-en",
    "en-es",
    "en-et",
    "en-fi",
    "en-fr",
    "en-it",
    "en-lt",
    "en-lv",
    "en-nl",
    "en-no",
    "en-pt",
    "en-ru",
    "en-sk",
    "en-sv",
    "en-tr",
    "en-uk",
    "es-en",
    "es-es",
    "es-ru",
    "et-en",
    "et-ru",
    "fi-en",
    "fi-ru",
    "fi-fi",
    "fr-fr",
    "fr-en",
    "fr-ru",
    "hu-hu",
    "hu-ru",
    "it-en",
    "it-it",
    "it-ru",
    "lt-en",
    "lt-lt",
    "lt-ru",
    "lv-en",
    "lv-ru",
    "mhr-ru",
    "mrj-ru",
    "nl-en",
    "nl-ru",
    "no-en",
    "no-ru",
    "pl-ru",
    "pt-en",
    "pt-ru",
    "ru-be",
    "ru-bg",
    "ru-cs",
    "ru-da",
    "ru-de",
    "ru-el",
    "ru-en",
    "ru-es",
    "ru-et",
    "ru-fi",
    "ru-fr",
    "ru-hu",
    "ru-it",
    "ru-lt",
    "ru-lv",
    "ru-mhr",
    "ru-mrj",
    "ru-nl",
    "ru-no",
    "ru-pl",
    "ru-pt",
    "ru-ru",
    "ru-sk",
    "ru-sv",
    "ru-tr",
    "ru-tt",
    "ru-uk",
    "ru-zh",
    "sk-en",
    "sk-ru",
    "sv-en",
    "sv-ru",
    "tr-de",
    "tr-en",
    "tr-ru",
    "tt-ru",
    "uk-en",
    "uk-ru",
    "uk-uk",
    "zh-ru"

I wish everyone a great day!

Hi Everyone

I am running windows 7 with the latest version of NVDA using the IBM TTS
Voice.

I have lots of music on my machine. If there is a track beginning "Mary"
preceded by a track number, NVDA speaks "March 4th y" instead of "04
Mary".

Is there a setting or a dictionary entry I can change to stop this
happening?

Thanks

Pele West

Well, why not using request module  to send request to check dict meaning from some popular website?

There is a command NVDA key d that will open the long description in a new window.

Gene

I've never actually seen one of those. Although I do not believe NVDA indicates when a longdesc is actually available, does it?

This appears to be an accessibility feature for blind users some web site developers implement. Let's say you are on something, that is usually a graphic, as the manual says and you want to see if there is more description available than you hear, if you hear any. Issuing the long description command will open a new window and display that longer description provided by the site designer.

Gene

Hi,
A long description (often shortened to "longdesc") is used by web authors to provide additional details about a web element (typically images) via a dedicated description. As such, it is employed in browse mode only.
Cheers,
Jsoeph

Hi friends
May you explain to me what long description
NVDA+d means? When I read the nvda user guide, i couldn't understand
what long description
NVDA+d means and its use.

Luke,

           Just to be clear, I am really not, ever, trying to handle every possible odd exception condition that might come up.  If what I craft gets 99.5% of all commonly used formats, I'm fine.  If someone makes a typo like leaving no space between the closing parenthesis of an area code and the exchange, or were to skip a hyphen between the area code and the exchange, I'm more than happy to have that read badly, as it should clue in the listener that something's off about the formatting.

            I've had to write hellishly complicated regexes in the past that needed to handle a multitude of normal and exception conditions, and they exhaust me when they get to that extent, particularly when "that extent" is really unlikely to be necessary.

            But George should have his solution at this point, that's for sure!
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

It’s hard waking up and realizing it’s not always black and white.

     ~ Kelley Boorn

 

On Sat, 26 Sep 2020, Brian Vogel wrote:

would lead to the [ \.-] character class for the two separation regions.  Although I must say I've never seen anyone use a period as the separator in a
phone number, but just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that it's not common in my little corner of the world.

I don't know what the reasoning for it is, but I have seen it in some places, usually done by North American businesses. I always assumed it was somehow related to fonts on business cards or the like, or maybe just a desire to be different.

I've seen it a lot in the whois database as well.

Luke

On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 12:01 AM, Luke Davis wrote:

Why not just use something like this?

-
Well, your example is exactly what my tweak would have been, so, sure.  All I wanted was a set of examples of exactly what formats could be expected, which would lead to the [ \.-] character class for the two separation regions.  Although I must say I've never seen anyone use a period as the separator in a phone number, but just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that it's not common in my little corner of the world.
 
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

It’s hard waking up and realizing it’s not always black and white.

     ~ Kelley Boorn

 

On Sun, 27 Sep 2020, Luke Davis wrote:

Regex: \(?(\d)(\d)(\d)\)?[ \.-](\d)(\d)(\d)[ \.-](\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)

I should note, that the one case that won't handle, is:

(###)###-####

I suspect we would have to get creative to manage that one. Along the lines of:

\(?(\d)(\d)(\d)(?:\)?[ \.-]|\))(\d)(\d)(\d)[ \.-](\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)\D

I added a \D at the end to hopefully make sure we're not grabbing something that isn't a phone number.
The former expressions would have munged things like:

123-456-789090009876

(Like a serial number or tracking number or similar.)

Luke

On Sat, 26 Sep 2020, Brian Vogel wrote:

George,Give me a short list of examples that cover the range of formats you need for this to work with and I can tweak the regex.  Trying to explain how is
not something I'm inclined to do, at least not on-group, as it's really off-topic if you get hot and heavy into regular expression syntax.--

Why not just use something like this? Untested, but it should catch periods, dashes, and spaces.
Replacement uses a comma for pausing.

Regex: \(?(\d)(\d)(\d)\)?[ \.-](\d)(\d)(\d)[ \.-](\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)

Replacement: \1 \2 \3, \4 \5 \6, \7 \8 \9 \10

Luke

Sure thing, Brian. I wasn't looking for a short course on regular expressions. :) I'd like to handle phone numbers where the area code, excnagge and local sections are separated with dashes or spaces. The area code may or may not be enclosed in parentheses.

###-###-####

(###)-###-####

(###) ### ####

### ### ####

I don't expect to handle a phone number containing both spaces and dashes as separaters.

I really appreciate your help on this. I'm sure it will be of general benefit to Espeak users.

George

George,

Give me a short list of examples that cover the range of formats you need for this to work with and I can tweak the regex.  Trying to explain how is not something I'm inclined to do, at least not on-group, as it's really off-topic if you get hot and heavy into regular expression syntax.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

It’s hard waking up and realizing it’s not always black and white.

     ~ Kelley Boorn