[Sugar-devel] [FEATURE] Global Text to Speech

Gary Martin garycmartin at googlemail.com
Wed Jan 18 12:07:34 EST 2012


Hi Gonzalo,

On 17 Jan 2012, at 21:48, Gonzalo Odiard <gonzalo at laptop.org> wrote:

> Hi Gonzalo,
> 
> thanks for the patch! Here are a few notes:
> 
> - when you have a text selected and want it to be spoken out a clipboard entry is created (I guess you need to have a look at why the clipboard tray reacts to that selection)
> 
> 
> I only see this problem with the Write activity, not with Read, Browse or Wikipedia-
> May be Write is doing anything different with the clipboard?
>  
> - you specify gconf keys, those would need to be added to the schema as well
> 
> Added.
>  
> - when you select a long text for reading there is no way to pause/stop it, might be worth having that option as well
> 
> 
> It's true. I have added controls to pause/stop in the palette. 
> I have tried with two options (please see http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Features/Global_Text_To_Speech)

Thanks for the screenshots, looks like a really useful feature!

One quick extra comment with my Design hat on. Regarding the Rate and Pitch sliders, they are vertically very close together, and horizontally very short. Keeping in mind our need to support finger sized touch input events, could we separate these two sliders so they take the full width of the palette (see the volume device)? So, we would end up with a full width pitch slider, the word Pitch centred below, a horizontal separator, a full width rate slider, the word Rate centred below.

> One option with menu items and the other with buttons. The option with menu items looks better,
> but when the item is activated, the palette close, then if you want pause/play more than one time 
> is annoying. 
> The option with buttons is better for usability, because the palette is not closed,
> but is uglier (the separator does not take all the palette width). Advice is welcomed.

I agree with you above ;) the menu item version looks better, more consistent; the buttons version is uglier, looks a little broken. The usability behaviour of keeping the palette open when play/pausing is an important benefit for our target audience (should encourage reading along with the spoken text).

Is it possible to override the menu item so this event doesn't percolate all the way up to triggering the menu to auto close? Sorry my gtk event handeling knowledge is rather slim.

> The code is commented in the patch then is easy test the two options  
> (SpeechPalette __init__ and _set_buttons_state)
> 
> I don't know what to do with the hot key. Pause if the user press when a text is being played?

A Pause/Play toggle would be good if the system responds fairly quickly (say less than a second). If it's too slow, a user will be tempted to click/touch again and pause before it had a chance to start.

Regards,
--Gary

>>   - the shortcut is a bit long, maybe 'alt+s' is enough? (see above, maybe there is a shortcut as well for stopping? or hitting it again does stop the current playing one?)
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, changed. To stop we use Ctrl + q
>  
>  
> - it would be great to write in the Feature page a bit more about the what the Feature does and what it does not do, after discussing with you the other day: it is available in the Shell+Activities for any text you select, it does not allow you to do activity specific operations like reading a chapter in Read, or a whole book or a wikipedia activity in Browse nor does it is a primary tool for Accessibility (no criticism intended just to note what it does and what not)
> 
> Formal:
> 
> - there are a few items that do not need to be public e.g. 'self.pipeline' in 'AudioGrabGst'
> 
> I have changed them. Now I have two variables is_playing, is paused visible from outside, then added properties to access them readonly.
>  
> - the copyright in the files is a bit all over the place
> 
> Ok. Changed. 
>  
> Thanks by the review, the patch is sent to sugar-devel.
> 
> 
> Regards,
>   Simon
> 
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