Has anyone had any success reliably switching among text-to-speech engines and languages on-the-fly under Android 4.03 (ICS)? Under Android 2.3.3 this worked great using the TextToSpeech method setEngineByPackageName(), but that method is now not only deprecated but for some reason it no longer reliably switches among installed speech engines. I use the Google Text-to-speech Engine that comes with ICS, the SVOX Classic TTS and eSpeak TTS on an HTC Desire ONE X running Android 4.03.
I had no problems quickly and reliably switching among installed TTS engines and their languages on an old HTC Desire running Android 2.3.3. Whatever I try now under Android 4.03, results are erratic at best. The deprecated setEngineByPackageName() sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't - and I really do not mind not knowing when it finishes switching engines. Doing stop() and shutdown() on an active TextToSpeech instance before creating a new one for another engine via TextToSpeech(context, listener, engine) and then waiting for its listener to be invoked before testing with isLanguageAvailable() if a certain language is supported by that engine also proves unreliable. As far as I am concerned, Android 4.0 appears a major step backwards as compared to Android 2.3.3 where it comes to dynamically switching TTS engines and languages, and after spending many hours I still have not found a reliable workaround that lets me programmatically switch between languages among multiple installed TTS engines that each support different subsets of languages. It should not have been hard to switch between, say, SVOX Classic TTS for Dutch and the Google TTS for German? Or are the third-party TTS engines to blame for still flawed ICS support? Thanks! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
