[sugar] Speech Synthesis Integration - User Interfaces and other Implementation Considerations

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Hemant Goyal <goyal.hemant at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was thinking while the packaging of speech dispatcher continues I could
> finalize certain UI considerations for speech synthesis. I had a word with
> Tomeu and he advised me to write all the points in a mail to the list.
>
> Particularly we want to focus on :
>
> A Speech Configuration Management for Sugar
> Provision of a control panel for modifying speech synthesis parameters

This could be integrated into the control panel Simon is working on, Eben?

> How these parameters will be stored and retrieved when changes are made
> What parameters to expose?
>
> Language - Perhaps this should be the sugar default?
> Voice Selection - Male/Female, Child/Adult, Age
> Rate
> Pitch
> Volume
> GUI considerations
> A Speech Synthesis Button
> Has many states - Play/Stop (Pause?)
> Reveals a control panel for modifying the speech synthesis parameters and
> provides a text box for getting some text data for speech synthesis?
>
> What to text to send for speech synthesis?
> If some text is highlighted then that text should be sent
> If no text is highlighted and speech synthesis button is clicked
> Send data of some active window and provide karaoke style highlighting of
> text?


The distinction between text selected and no-text selected is tricky
here. In particular you could have a text selection in activity A, but
the user could be currently using activity B. If we need to support
no-text, probably we will have to implement both cases at the activity
level :/


> Continue synthesis until the end of the document or stop button is pressed
> Possibly a Speech Synthesis keyboard shortcut too - Should effect the Speech
> Synthesis button

I'm not sure I understand the use cases here, but it feels like
something that could be better integrated into an activity than using
a magic button.

> Speak out a welcome message to the child when the XO boots up? (Hello xyz
> welcome to sugar or something like that?)

I think that would be annoying.

Marco