text to speech, any plugin or something?

[Mahmood]

Hi

Can I find a plug in or something to "text-to-speech" a text document or an ebook?

[hamishmacdonald]

TranCreative's excellent WordBook dictionary has a plug-in that provides text-to-speech in many applications. I'm sure it won't work in Microsoft Reader, though.

WordBook:
http://www.trancreative.com/wordbook.aspx

[SteveHoward999]

This is the closest I know of

http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=1&jid=XC6944X91C3EB58FFEX9B4E11C8E4C78&platformId=2&N=96806&productId=157638&R=157638


Fonix Voice Central.


Don't think it will do all you want though.


Incidentally I am exploring using one of Fonix' software tools to build a training application that uses text-to-speech. If enough people are interested (i.e. there might be a real market for it) I might try to make a tts book reader. I'm new to PDA development so it might take a little while.

[Mahmood]

Thanks for replies

[Cybrid]

The Toshiba E-8xx series has an OEM installed text to speech solution....Who makes that?

Voice Command and Text to Speech
Now this is pretty neat, and not only that, it's useful! The e805 and its little brother the e405 come with Toshiba's Voice Command and Text to Speech applications. Simply install these from the included CDROM and you're on your way to having meaningful dialogs with your Pocket PC. The Text to Speech application requires about 5 megs of space and the Voice Command takes under 1 meg.

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/toshiba_e805.htm

[Tye]

Incidentally I am exploring using one of Fonix' software tools to build a training application that uses text-to-speech. If enough people are interested (i.e. there might be a real market for it) I might try to make a tts book reader. I'm new to PDA development so it might take a little while.
Steve, I might be interested in something like this. Can you provide more details?

[Tye]

Hi

Can I find a plug in or something to "text-to-speech" a text document or an ebook?
mahmood, if you can find a copy of iSpeak for Pocket PC, also by Fonix, that might suit your needs better if all you want is TTS. I use it all the time on my ipaq 4705.

[SteveHoward999]

Steve, I might be interested in something like this. Can you provide more details?


In what way are you interested? As a user or a developer? If as a developer, just go to www.fonix.com and see what they have to offer. There are links so you can email then if you are interested. Licensing is a bit steep unless you are truly a professional developer.

If as a user .... well Fonix sell a set of tools that developers can use to add text-t--speech and voice recognition to their software. Right now I am finishing up a university project in which I am using that set of tools to build a sample eLearning application. It's my first foray into C# and PocketPC development (well, actually I have done a fair bit of Flash development for PocketPC too, but there really is little difference between developing for desktop or PocketPC).

So what I am suggesting is that, once I am finished with the university stuff (about 2 weeks time) I'd be interested in looking into developing a book reader app that can read books of various file type.

The interesting thing about the Fonix tools is that they offer numerous voices out of the box, and numerous languages too ... so you can have US English, UK English (yaaay British robot!!), Spanish, French, German ... several other European languages. So (at least in theory) it should be possible to build a book reader that is pretty clever.

Obviously I am no expert at this stage, but if it were possible to add multi-formats to the reader too - html, txt, rtf etc then it would be pretty cool for those who would like a talking book reader.

The installation is relatively light too. The more languages you need, the more dictionary files and supporting dlls, but for one language it should be possible to do the entire thing in less than 5 Mb ... maybe as little as 2 or 3 (but don't hold me too rigidly to that!!!).

[Tye]

Steve,

I am interested as an end user. I already use the Fonix voices extensively and find them to be very useful. The crutch in their system, as far as I'm concerned, has always been the player software, which you seem to be addressing. The fact that there is no "fast forward" or "rewind" is extremely inconvenient when you're listening to more than a couple hundred words at a time.

As you progress with your project, please keep us posted.

Also, I'm not sure exactly which direction you want to go with this but as a possibility, maybe you could build your idea as a plugin for uBook? www.gowerpoint.com, that way you don't have to reinvent the wheel for the actual reading part. Just a thought...

[pocketpcadmirer]

Hi just took my friend's copy for a while to test fonix.
It doesn't play text files only messages and basic and simple interaction with the pocket pc and thats it

Sunny

[Tye]

Hi just took my friend's copy for a while to test fonix.
It doesn't play text files only messages and basic and simple interaction with the pocket pc and thats it
Sunny, yeah, Fonix haven't worked on it much. That's why I'd love a real reader. Are you using it on a machine newer than WM2003? Even WM2003SE has trouble with it. I mostly use only the clipboard player after I've copied text from uBook.
As an aside, somehow Fonix iSpeak started working on my 4705 with WM2003SE about a year ago and now will play text files. I honestly don't know why it started working--it just did. Anyway, give it a spin using the clipboard feature and see what you think.

[martin_ayton]

Steve,

I would pay money for something that would read books (pdb / eReader format and maybe pdfs as well) to me. I use Fonix VoiceDial and their UK English voices would be OK for this purpose. I would want the app to be able to start reading at a point in the book defined by me and leave a bookmark in the book at the point where I stop it reading, so that I can pick up from there myself. The screen would also need to show nice, big pause, stop, start, rewind and fast forward buttons.

I'll happily beta test anything along these lines for you.

All the best!

Martin.

[SteveHoward999]

I'll happily beta test anything along these lines for you.

Martin.

Martin, I am really interested in making this work. I ***have*** to get this university project completed by January 16th, then I should be able to put some time into this. Expect me to be crawling before I can walkbefore I can run. I'll take you up on the beta testing offer :-)

If you hear nothing from me in a couple of weeks or so, PM me and I'll let you know what's going on. Same to anyone else who reads this thread and is interested. If we can get a few people beta testing it will motivate me to do a better job :-)

Oh - and I promise that those who contribute to beta testing will get free copies of the software, whether it goes on commercial sale or not!

[martin_ayton]

Steve,

No problem: work before play (I can't believe I just wrote that!). It'll be interesting to see this thing develop.

All the best with the university project.

BTW - Now you're stateside, shouldn't that be 2.5 pints of lager to make up for the short measures over there?

Cheers,

Martin.

[SteveHoward999]

Work pays for play .... that makes it easier to swallow :-)

The uni stuff is the culmination of 3.5 years part-time on a Masters course. Try fitting in work, emmigration, marriage and Katrina while trying to study ;-)

Good point about the short measures ... time to fix that!

[pocketpcadmirer]

Sunny, yeah, Fonix haven't worked on it much. That's why I'd love a real reader. Are you using it on a machine newer than WM2003? Even WM2003SE has trouble with it. I mostly use only the clipboard player after I've copied text from uBook.

I'm currently using a htc magician and it works on it without problems

Sunny

[pocketpcadmirer]

Oh - and I promise that those who contribute to beta testing will get free copies of the software, whether it goes on commercial sale or not!

Include me too. Just drop me a pm and I'll test it on my ipaq 2215 and my htc magician too

Sunny

[Tye]

Me too, please.

[SteveHoward999]

Wow - quite a bit of interest.

Couple of questions.

When would you use it? Driving? On bus/train/whatever commute? While doing something else (washing dishes, ironing, fixing the car, working out in the gym ...)? To relax at bedtime? Take the mind off boring work?

Why are you interested in having the book read to you? I ask because I cannot listen to speaking while I drive, it puts me to sleep ... Admittedly 3 years ago I was saying I can't understand why anyone would want to read a book on "one of those tiny screens" and now I have hundreds of eBooks and probably read at least 2 a week, so maybe I could become a convert :-)

Would it be important to you to have voice control of the software too? Or are you only interested in having it read books for you?

Anyone use eBooks for study? Would it be useful to be able to 'speak' notes for reference and tag them to a page or sentence?


If we can spend the next couple of weeks discussing this, then I can put together a list of features that I should aim to include. Like I said, lets crawl before walk before run, but this could be fun :-)

[pocketpcadmirer]

I use ebooks for references..mainly programming refernecs as I am doind a computer applications course.
I use them in the college;at home or anywhere when I am free and want to do something productive(instead of playing games :wink: )

Sunny

[Patrick Y.]

Hello steve,
I'm interested in your software too. It sounds fantastic.

Anyway, I really want to use it for study purposes. It would be nice if it can read my notes to me. Yeah, I think it's would be useful to be able to 'speak' notes for reference and tag them to a page or sentence. Thanks!!

BTW, PM me or drop me an email and I'm test it on my x50v and n10. BTW, I know almost NOTHING about programming. :lol:

[martin_ayton]

Steve,

I might have it read to me whilst I'm driving, but that would depend on me getting a decent link rigged up between the PPC and the car stereo, which doesn't exist (for me) yet. I don't like wired headsets while I'm driving. Using my BT headset might work though.

It's more likely that I'd have it read to me in the same situations that I might use the PPC to listen to music: walking the dog; chores around the house; flying my paraglider. The sort of places where having to use your eyes to read means you do things like walk into lampposts.

I pretty much exclusively use PPC readers to read eBooks, the Bible and emails - yeah: having it able to read emails would be great.

Whilst it occurs to me, the app would need to detect and pause for incoming 'phone calls for 'phone edition PPCs.

And yes, perhaps you did go a little too far. The stuff about Miller and Budweiser is redundant anyhow: they could never qualify as lager anyway under any reasonable definition of that term :mrgreen:

Cheers,

Martin.

[Tye]

I use TTS for studying 90% of the time and reading books while driving the rest. I have been very successful using TTS for studying "memorization oriented" subjects. My Bluespoon AX is great for this because of its long battery life and great comfort.

[uwaku]

Steve, add me to your list, as well, please. I use an HP h6315, and use both MS Reader & uBook for ebooks. I use them for reference as well as entertainment, and if your system could handle voice commands, as well, I'd be happy to beta all the features.

[caubeck]

I turn notes and articles into .lit ebooks. It would be great to be able to lie in bed at night listening to the texts I need for my university degree.

I have an ipaq 1935 and a 1945, let me know if I can help test anything. caubeck at gmail dot com

[SteveHoward999]

I just got a private mail nudging me about this. Here's what my response was

--------------

I looked into the cost of the tts application kit (from Fonix) I was using for the university project. Turns out they have a unit charge of $30 per use, meaning if I tried to make a commercial application it would have to cost at least $40 to have any chance of making any money - not that I was interested purely on a commercial basis. Cost was of no relevance for the uni thing, because I got a free limited license, but this sounds terribly steep for low-volume PPC applications!

So I started looking around for alternatives. I mailed three likely companies about their products, asking if they havea licensing system that would allow a commercial app to be sold at $10 to $20. I have not recived a response from any of them :( Still looking for alternatives.

On a better note, I contacted the suppliers of the application and they said it's absolutely fine for me to develop a non-commercial applicaiton for 'a group of friends' so we are still OK to go with Fonix, provided I have no intentions of charging for the book reader. They didn't say how large or small the group of friends should be ;-)

I plan to make a start over the next week. I have had to catch up on my normal work first, hence the delay.