[BRLTTY] Speech Dictionaries

[Tage Johansson]

>Isn't it the job of the speech renderer - not the screen renderer - to 

>render speech correctly?

 

You are probably right, it would be better if the speech synthesizer
supported the speech dictionary.

But there are so many synthesizers out there, and there is no standardized
way to handle speech dictionaries. So, evry user have to learn how their
speech synthesizer works and how to edit its pronunciation. And if you have
multiple synthesizers to choose from, then it will be very annoying to learn
how to handle every synthesizer.

 

>I also have had next to no exposure to what other screen readers do or
don't do regarding speech dictionaries. 

All screen readers I have tried uses speech dictionaries, including: jaws,
nvda and orca.

 

But, it is a bad idea to implement speech dictionaries just to be able to
correct the pronunciation of a speech synthesizer. Because it will effect
all synthesizers, even they whos pronunciation is correct. One such example
is, when I were younger, I used a synthesizer that were unable to pronounce
my name correct. Therefore, I edited the speech dictionary in jaws to fix
the annoying problem. But when I had to use another synthesizer, then it
pronounced my name bad too, even though it whould not have done that.

 

But there are still one case where speech dictionaries witch affects every
synthesizer is useful: if you want your speech synthesizer to pronounce
contractions correctly. For example: km kilometers, libgcc libGCC, .bashrc
.bashRC, openssl openSSL.

It is not the responsibility of the speech synthesizer. In fact, it is very
bad when a speech synthesizer has implemented such contractions in their
dictionary. One example is vocalizers synthesizers. I used their synthesizer
called "Samantha" for some years ago. Vocalizer had implemented a lot of
annoying contractions in the vocabulary. Samantha pronounced "cad" Canadian
dollars, but for me, "cad" means computer aided design. So every time I read
about cad, then Samantha spoke Canadian dollars.

 

As a conclution, I think that it would be a good idea to implement a speech
dictionary in brltty. But we must be clear about why, and what purpose it
has.

 

Best regards!

Tage

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