[IAEP] Internet Archive now supports text to speech with sentence highlighting

[Edward Cherlin]

English-only so far? Any further plans?

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 15:43, James Simmons <nicestep at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just discovered this a minute ago and thought it would be of
> interest.  The Internet Archive lets you read a book online.  They
> have polished up their online book reader code to the point that it
> now supports text to speech.  It highlights sentences instead of
> words, and has a nice, human-female-sounding voice that is much more
> pleasant than what espeak gives us.
>
> Here are a couple of links to try out:
>
> http://www.archive.org/stream/BigAviationBookForBoys#page/n15/mode/2up
>
> http://www.archive.org/stream/MakeYourOwnSugarActivities/ActivitiesGuideSugar-en-2010.10.08-17.20.43#page/n5/mode/2up
>
> To date we only have TTS with highlighting in one Activity, which is
> Read Etexts.  The highlighting lags behind the word spoken on an XO
> laptop (although it keeps up on a more powerful machine).  This makes
> me wonder if sentence highlighting might be a better alternative (and
> also how to decide what constitutes a sentence).  The IA code doesn't
> always get it right, but it does OK.
>
> What is neat is that it works on books like BigAviationBook that were
> created by photographing page images.  This makes me think we could
> get TTS working in the Read Activity.
>
> Anyway, have a look.
>
> James Simmons
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-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/