pauses after punctuation and sentence end in different speech synthesizers
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Akshaya Choudhary
I have observed, Espeak and Eloquence provide a very brief pause after punctuation and sentence break, when compared to other synthesizers. Even the pause after pressing command keys is shorter. For example, while navigating a simple list menu with arrow keys, NVDA would say, DOWN ARROW, then it would speak the next item after a very brief pause. Although, I find this very useful for navigating around different applications, but for serious study of a document, it is annoying. For this purpose i prefer to use SAPI 5.
-- While reading large documents it is helpful to have slightly longer pauses, it helps you understand the text better, which is exactly the role of punctuation. Especially while reading literary works. Is there a feature in NVDA which could let us control the duration of the pause, like we can do with speed and pitch? Regards, Sociohack |
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I tried to find a way to do this not too long ago. I sometimes use NVDA to perform poetry I've written at my poetry readings, but the answers I received were that the length of pauses is not controlable via NVDA, it is dependent on whichever voice you are using.
You basically have the length of a comma and the length of a full stop / period, and that's it. I do not detect any difference in the length of pause for a semicolon compared to a comma. There is no way to use two full stops to get a double length pause, nor to combine a comma with a full stop to get like a full stop and a half of pausing! Likewise, with my preferred poetry performance voice, Hazel (Microsoft SAPI5) there is no raised intonation to indicate a question mark, where in other voices (Microsoft Zira, for example) the question mark is clearly audible. I used to own a pair of Orcam glasses and ran into the same problem with the length of pauses with that system. Just the comma / semicolon and the full stop were the only two pauses. Dashes, m-dashes and n-dashes produce no pause at all in any of the voices I've tried. One thing that made me smile was that I'm scheduled to read in Torquay, south England, in October and on the flyers my event is listed as Giles and Hazel ... maybe I can make a case for Hazel getting an appearance fee too ;) Sorry not to have better news on the pausing question. I remain hopeful that one day a solution will be found for this, but I think it lies in the hands of the creators of the different voices. Giles |
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Akshaya Choudhary
Hahah, Hazel should definitely get an appearance fee. Someone on reddit told me that in Voice Dream Reader you can control the duration of the pauses after punctuation and sentence break. It would be great to have similar feature for NVDA. SAPI 5 voices do provide intonation pauses, but they also provide pauses after command keys, which makes them slow for general navigation. Maybe, we could have a feature enabling the users to toggle between extended pauses and short pauses. For general navigation short pauses will be great, like they are in Espeak, and for reading long documents long pauses would be very helpful, like they are in SAPI 5 voices. |
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Abbie Taylor
It would also be helpful if NVDA could pause at the end of a line where there is a hard return. This would not only make poetry reading more enjoyable, but it would also make it easier to spot hard returns when editing a document. In other words, you may have accidentally press the Enter key while typing a sentence and not realize it. I've done this myself a few times.
System Access pauses at the ends of lines where there are hard returns, so I can't imagine why NVDA couldn't be programmed to do the same. Of course some people may not want this feature, so perhaps it could be turned on or off in the preferences or with a hot key. |
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Brian's Mail list account
A lot of people have a say all profile using a different synth for reading long documents with.
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Brian bglists@... Sent via blueyonder. Please address personal E-mail to:- briang1@..., putting 'Brian Gaff' in the display name field. ----- Original Message -----
From: "Sociohack AC" <acsociopath@...> To: <nvda@nvda.groups.io> Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 7:45 AM Subject: [nvda] pauses after punctuation and sentence end in different speech synthesizers I have observed, Espeak and Eloquence provide a very brief pause after punctuation and sentence break, when compared to other synthesizers. Even the pause after pressing command keys is shorter. For example, while navigating a simple list menu with arrow keys, NVDA would say, DOWN ARROW, then it would speak the next item after a very brief pause. Although, I find this very useful for navigating around different applications, but for serious study of a document, it is annoying. For this purpose i prefer to use SAPI 5. -- While reading large documents it is helpful to have slightly longer pauses, it helps you understand the text better, which is exactly the role of punctuation. Especially while reading literary works. Is there a feature in NVDA which could let us control the duration of the pause, like we can do with speed and pitch? Regards, Sociohack |
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Akshaya Choudhary
How to set up a different say all profile? --
Regards, Sociohack |
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I would very much like that feature, Abbie. I It is a nightmare trying to figure out which lines have hard returns and which have soft returns. Whenever I send a poem to a magazine, or enter it into a competition, it can be hard work making sure it is formatted correctly! I have a profile set up for editing with formatting, in which I slow the speed a little and have NVDA reading most formatting options, but I have found no way to indicate the difference between a soft return and a hard return ... soft returns are needed in Word at the end of lines within a stanza / verse, and a hard return is needed for a stanza break, where a single blank line is needed between the last line of one stanza and the first line of the next. Sighted people have it easy because they can see on the page how much white space there is between one line and the next ;)
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Akshaya Choudhary
Maybe you can navigate line by line and press return twice at the end of the stanza, to indicate the stanza break. This way you won't have problem formatting your poems. At the end of the stanza NVDA will read "BLANK", and you would know of the break. This is how I study my poetry. Of course, while reading the poems of others, it might be difficult, as they might not have formatted it according to your expectations. |
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Travis Siegel
Generally, the way pauses are handled is that if you want longer
pauses for the speech, you simply add extra punctuation. I.E. if
1 comma pauses for half a second, then two of them pauses for a
full second. I realize that NVDA isn't built this way, but most
dos screen readers were, and I believe speakup is also built this
way (the sonsole-based screen reader for linux). I don't know
about orca, since I've not experimented with such things uder
orca. Obviously, this only works when you have control over the
text being read by the synthesizer, and not stuff that is already
written, but it would be a nice start. On 7/13/2018 11:41 AM, Sociohack AC
wrote:
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