Hi David, Yes, I wondered about the same thing ... I doubt if we'd be able to get it exact enough to be able to insert a pause of an exact value, but still, you don't know until you try.
Chip -----Original Message----- From: David [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 2:32 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: causing pauses in speech Chip, maybe a crazy idea, and it might eventually be useless. Haven't had time to check up any of it, so just throwing it on the board. If you say that the sleep command between the speak lines will work, just it is long enough. My idea here is, how to calculate the length of such a sleep command. As I see it, there would mainly be two values to be considered: the number of words to be spoken, and the actual set speech rate. Could you have a small function that made a calculation based on these parametres, multiplied it with some hundreds or tenths of a second, and then returned you a Sleeping-value, that you then could insert between two speak lines? OK, the function and its exact value of milliseconds to be multiplied, would have to be a matter of 'play-and-try', but it eventually might be helpful for later projects as well, so might not be loss of time after all. Again, it might differ slightly from one synth to another, since some synths are faster speakers than others, hence could cause the pause to be quite nnoticeable. Still, it might be a workaround in most cases. As I said, this is taken right off my head, hence use it for what it is worth. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chip Orange" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 8:15 PM Subject: RE: causing pauses in speech > Thanks Bruce and David for the responses. > > David, > > the sleep between speak commands will work, but there has to be nothing > speaking at the moment (a lot of queued speech will eat up all the time > you > are sleeping), and you have to make the sleep very long. for instance: > > silence > speak "he is eating his dinner" > sleep 5*1000 > speak "in the evening." > > that sleep is long enough for you to hear it's effect. if you comment it > out, the speech will happen without a break between the two, so you can > hear > the sleep does work. > > I haven't had much luck with breaking speech into multiple speak commands. > it adds a very very slight pause, but not much of one. > > Sorry Bruce, but you can't use XML SAPI commands in WE speech. > > If I add sleep commands between half a dozen speak commands though, and > the > user doesn't want to hear this block of speech, unfortunately pressing the > silence key for them doesn't work; because it could happen during one of > the > sleeps, and then it would pick up speaking again. > > thanks though for the ideas. > > Chip > > > -----Original Message----- > From: BT [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 12:23 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: causing pauses in speech > > > Hi Again, > > this sleep insertion is inside a event and does not work in a mormal > line. That is why I posted it, it is inside an event and not a direct > in-line command... > > Bruce > > Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 6:41 AM > Subject: Re: causing pauses in speech > > > Chip, > Likely you are already aware of this. Still, here goes. > > My best solution, in cases where I want a pause in a spoken phrase, is to > break it into several phrases. Unfortunately, the way Window-Eyes stands > today, I haven't found any way of controlling how long that pause will be, > but at least, there will be a pause at the point of a new phrase. So, the > phrase 'he was eating his supper, late in the evening', will be like this: > > Speak "He was eating his supper" > Speak "late in the evening" > > I did try, in one of my apps, to put a Sleep command between the two speak > lines, but all I got, was that the speech would do both the phrases, and > then the script would 'sleep' for the given time. OK, I only have tested > this with Eloquence, so can't speak for any other synth. But I do know, > that > TextAloud - from Nextup.com - does give you the full control to put pauses > of several seconds between two phrases, meaning that there should be > chance > of doing so; only that Window-Eyes might not open up for that kind of > control of the synths. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Allison and Chip Orange" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 2:23 AM > Subject: causing pauses in speech > > >> Hi all, >> >> I'm looking for a technique which will cause pauses in a long string of >> speech. It will be in a situation where it's very likely all the >> punctuation will be enabled, so simply placing some punctuation in the >> string isn't likely to help, just cause more to listen to. >> >> my only thought, was to turn off all the punctuation, add punctuation to >> the >> string (maybe just a comma between parts will be enough, my experiments >> seem >> to show that anything else, or more than one doesn't do any better), >> speak >> the string, and then turn back on punctuation. >> >> The trouble with this approach is the timing; if something else is >> speaking >> when I do this, it will lose it's punctuation; if something is speaking >> afterwards, it may not have it's punctuation. >> >> luckily, I'm doing this as a result of a hot key, so maybe the timing >> isn't >> as much of an issue, I'm just not sure. >> >> anyway, does anyone have any thoughts or any better technique? >> >> thanks. >> >> Chip >> >
