Bug 115728 - High Quality TTS output from within LO Writer
Summary: High Quality TTS output from within LO Writer
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
6.0.1.1 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2018-02-14 18:41 UTC by GRB
Modified: 2018-02-16 13:03 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description GRB 2018-02-14 18:41:05 UTC
Description:
This is a feature request:  I wish LO Writer had the ability to do High Quality Speech output.  The present extension works, but the quality is marginal at best.  The voices re extremely mechanical, very robotic and not realistic at all.

Actual Results:  
Installing the TTS extension results in very poor quality output.

Expected Results:
I get very poor quality speech output.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:


User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Comment 1 GRB 2018-02-14 18:43:36 UTC
I should have siad:  I expect the quality of the TTS to be much better than it is.  There are high quality speech converters on the Web, but I would like it integral to Writer.
Comment 2 Timur 2018-02-15 08:40:07 UTC
Not realistic that this additional feature will be created, when there are separate applications for that. Already said in Bug 88891.
Comment 3 GRB 2018-02-15 15:46:56 UTC
What is the separate application?  How do you install it?
Comment 4 GRB 2018-02-15 15:57:31 UTC
I am the GRB that posted this feature request there are two GRB's using this bug reporting system. I wish there was a way to edit posts as I tend to make many mistakes that I would like to correct.
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2018-02-15 16:21:57 UTC
Would be a nice and visionary enhancement. There are plenty of libraries and tools [1] and we should support that. But a built-in TTS won't be better than specialized tools and is out of scope.

As you reopened the ticket please close it yourself as WONTFIX. 

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Speech_recognition
Comment 6 GRB 2018-02-15 16:36:09 UTC
What I've tried so far has been of poor quality.  Built in isn't exactly the issue.  What is needed is some add-on that is capable of high quality synthetic speech output.
Comment 7 GRB 2018-02-15 16:39:34 UTC
I'm resistant to mark it "resolved" as I don't consider the issue resolved.  Either there is high quality synthetic speech or there isn't.  So far my experience is that there isn't.  If I'm wrong please tell me how to obtain and install it.  Is there documentation on how to do it?
Comment 8 Timur 2018-02-16 12:22:30 UTC
Bugzilla is a bug and enhancement tracking tool. 
You were supposed to first use ask.libreoffice.org what you did at https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/143354/tts-integration/ 
You got reply that points to the Read Text Extension and explains that the quality of the voices is not determined by the Read Text Extension, but by the speech synthesis software and available voices that are already installed on your system.
From what you wrote is not clear if you make a distinction between speech function in Office, OS engine and TTS voices for each language. 
So are unfairly use Bugzilla and QA resources now. 
Creating TTS voices is totally out of LO project scope. They should be available by a 3rd party. If they don't work with LO then it's NotOurBug. 
Please follow your Ask question.
Comment 9 Timur 2018-02-16 13:03:58 UTC
From what I see in offline LO Help with Find, there are some info although it could be better. 
"Using Read Text Extension" is not helpful and "On-line information" is, it points to http://sites.google.com/site/readtextextension/. https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/read-text is better. 
Since this is interesting topic, there could be http://wiki.documentfoundation.org page for TTS collecting info for Win, Lin Mac.  
GRB, by creating that page through research and practice, you'd help us all.