How to configure Qtspeech - definitely moving forward!

[Gustav Degreef]

Thanks Simion,

I will look for "ReadPlease 2003" and try it out with either Wine or
VirtualBox, appreciate the help, Gustav

On 9/22/19 9:29 AM, Simion wrote:
> Hi Gustav,
> no problem about the name, it happens all the time :-)
>
> about the voices, those natural voices are compatible with Microsoft
> Speech API,
> when I was using Widows and later in Wine I used a program called
> "ReadPlease 2003", the program is abandoned  now but it still works
> and it should work with any  voice that are compatible with Windows
> but I never tried. The feature this program has and I never found in
> other programs is that it highlights the current line or word that is
> spoken, this makes it easy  to go back one paragrpah or 2 if you were
> interupted or want to hear something again and also easy to skip
> forward if you hit some paragraphs with mathematical equations. As I
> said I suggest to get used of using faster and faster voices, your
> family will understand and you will read same texts 2 times faster so
> you gain time, at that speed any voice will sound robotic, this would
> not work if you want other to listen with you (but you can have a
> normal speed and a fast speed talker in jovie)
>
>
> On 9/22/19 2:54 PM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>> Hi Simion,
>>
>> Sorry about the spelling error, happens often with my vision problems.
>>
>> You are absolutely right!  The Pause does work!!!  I just have to wait
>> till it gets to the end of the sentence or sometimes paragraph.  But
>> that is fine.  And now with the Keyboard Shortcuts, Jovie is great!  I
>> read a lot of articles in Medicine and I am often interrupted.  If I
>> can
>> not pause and resume it is often a struggle to find where I was
>> listening.  This is great!!!
>>
>>  From what you and others are saying and from what I've read, I think I
>> understand better.  Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you have to
>> tell
>> speech-dispatcher which voice (e-speak, festival, etc.) to use?  If I
>> can figure out how to tell speech-dispatcher which voice to use then
>> Jovie (or Qtspeech) will then output my choice?  I have looked into it,
>> and there are several (about 6 different) voices I can use in Linux.
>>
>> Thanks for the suggestion about Wine.  I am familiar with it and have
>> tried it many times.  If I could find a Windows program to do what
>> Jovie
>> does, I certainly would try to use it with Wine.  I tried a lot of
>> programs in Windows to just simply read out selected text and I never
>> found a simple and easy one. I gave up.  Now with the Keyboard
>> Shortcuts
>> defined, Jovie is great.  I am sorry it is being deprecated.  But that
>> is what happens in Linux and I am very used to it, it's the price for
>> constant improvement in the system as a whole.
>>
>> Thanks a lot for your help, Gustav
>>
>> On 9/22/19 2:59 AM, Simion wrote:
>>> Hi Gustav
>>> about the Pause button, I think is not instant, it need to finish the
>>> phrase, can you try to Pause  and wait half a minute and see if I am
>>> right about this.
>>> My fixes are not related to this, mostly I found bugs when sending
>>> text to Jovie from scripts and sending weird values , Other bug was
>>> about changing talkers (I use an english and a romanian talker)
>>>
>>> About better voices, Jovie uses speech dispatcher and this one uses
>>> festival or espeak depending on how is configured, so you need to
>>> google those programs.
>>> I do not know if those natural sounding voices are compatible with
>>> this Linux programs,  other alternative is to try Windows
>>> programs in
>>> Wine, I did this a many years back and it worked.
>>>
>>> Btw you did not read my name correctly, is  Simion , don't worry
>>> about it though, it happens all the time
>>>
>>> On 9/22/19 2:22 AM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>>>> Hi Simon,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks a lot. I found how to configure the shortcuts.  I
>>>> configured 4 -
>>>> Read clipboard, Stop, Pause, Resume.  All work fine except
>>>> Pause.  It
>>>> works only 20% of the time.  I often have to repeat the shortcut
>>>> over
>>>> and over to get it to pause, and often it does not pause.  When it
>>>> does,
>>>> Resume always works.  This is the same behavior I have always
>>>> had with
>>>> the tray icon and why I had given up trying to use it.  If your
>>>> fixes
>>>> fix this then I would certainly be very pleased.  I don't need any
>>>> other
>>>> functionality other than the voices.  People are always around and
>>>> using
>>>> the headphone  adds another cable to my already cluttered
>>>> desk.  I
>>>> would
>>>> still very much like to be able to at least TRY different
>>>> voices.  But
>>>> the documentation for doing this with Jovie, has been very hard to
>>>> come
>>>> by and I have not been able to find any that really describes how
>>>> to do
>>>> it.  Only a bit here and there of partial information that I can
>>>> not
>>>> put
>>>> together.  Thanks for yours and others efforts, Gustav
>>>>
>>>> On 9/18/19 4:31 AM, Simion wrote:
>>>>> Hi Gustav,
>>>>> You can use keyboard shortcuts to control Jovie, you need to create
>>>>> this shortcuts, you can do it in system Settings, keyboard shortucts,
>>>>> Global section I think. I have a keyboard with an extra row of Media
>>>>> keys so I use those buttons . I use a voice with max speed (I had to
>>>>> train by incrementally increasing it) so it is weird for others to
>>>>> understand, the solution is to use headphones when others are around.
>>>>> I tried finding more natural sounding voices but I discovered that I
>>>>> prefer  faster speed so I can read things faster and the
>>>>> voice is
>>>>> not
>>>>> important at all.
>>>>>
>>>>> My commit messages  in Github explain what bugs fix, if
>>>>> you are not
>>>>> affected by those you can use the version from your repos.
>>>>>
>>>>> The only issue I have now is in this scenario:
>>>>> I open say 3 articles  in browser, use reader mode if
>>>>> needed, copy
>>>>> paste them in clipboard one by one and have jovie read the clipboard
>>>>>
>>>>> so now I have the 1,2,3 articles in a list to be read and Jovie is
>>>>> reading the1st one,
>>>>> if I use Pause and then Resume while reading article 1 , it reads
>>>>> Article 2, 3 and finaly it continues to finish Article 1 . It did not
>>>>> bother me that much to fix the bug though.
>>>>>
>>>>> When Jovie will not work I am considering  write a
>>>>> replacement,
>>>>> maybe
>>>>> in Python or JS so anyone can read the code, edit and try fixing or
>>>>> extending it the current solution where you would use QtSpeech that
>>>>> wraps speechdispatcher that wraps festival or espeak is cery
>>>>> convolutede, QtSpeech was bugged when I tested it and I am not that
>>>>> good at programming to build Qt from source and try to fix it I also
>>>>> prefer to use LTS distributions
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 9/18/19 2:20 AM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, I am also still using Jovie.  I use it only from the
>>>>>> tray
>>>>>> icon.  I
>>>>>> select the text, copy from context menu and then click on the tray
>>>>>> icon
>>>>>> and select to speak clipboard contents. The only other
>>>>>> functionality I
>>>>>> can use is to stop the speaking at some point.  I have
>>>>>> tried to
>>>>>> pause
>>>>>> and resume from the tray icon (which is the main functionality
>>>>>> that I
>>>>>> would like) but it never works properly.  I have tried to
>>>>>> configure
>>>>>> jovie to use a different voice than e-speak but i have read and
>>>>>> read and
>>>>>> never succeeded.  E-speak is fine for me, but it drives
>>>>>> my wife
>>>>>> crazy,
>>>>>> and my friends hat the voice, no matte how i change the various
>>>>>> settings.  I can continue to use Jovie (without Qtspeech) as
>>>>>> long as it
>>>>>> keeps working.  But since it is deprecated, I am trying
>>>>>> to be
>>>>>> prepared
>>>>>> when it no longer works.  That is the only reason I am
>>>>>> trying to
>>>>>> move
>>>>>> from Jovie.  Thanks a lot for your input.  I
>>>>>> would like to
>>>>>> try your
>>>>>> modifications., Gustav.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 9/17/19 9:58 AM, Simion wrote:
>>>>>>> Hi, I am still using Jovie, it is still present in Kubuntu 18.04
>>>>>>> repositories.
>>>>>>> When Jovie will be removed from the repos I think I may try to
>>>>>>> write
>>>>>>> some scripts and some GUi if needed to replace it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In my humble opinion we Linux users we need some cross desktop
>>>>>>> basic
>>>>>>> application, I am not sure about the desktop integration part but
>>>>>>> from
>>>>>>> what I seen when testing QtSpeech it  makes
>>>>>>> more sense for
>>>>>>> me to
>>>>>>> avoid the extra Qt abstraction or make multiple backends.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> out of curiosity what Jovie features you use?
>>>>>>> I use the following
>>>>>>> - the dbus /command line interface to call Jovie from scripts
>>>>>>> - the Global shortcuts
>>>>>>> - the context menu in the tray icon to change languages(that I
>>>>>>> contributed)
>