I like the TTS very much. Still sometimes I'd like to be able to easily and quickly switch between TTS and recorded audio just for a single item. How about providing this functionality by using a long tap on the speaker icon as the trigger for the alternative audio (the one not set in the settings)?
TTS vs. recorded audio
- Thread starter Marc
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The system should generally only use TTS if it doesn't have a recording for the item, i.e. if it can only play syllable-by-syllable - is it not doing that for you, or do you want an option for syllable-by-syllable playback in those cases? It's theoretically doable, but to be honest I don't think it's likely to be popular enough to get that long-press gesture to itself - maybe as part of a menu coming up through a long-press gesture that also allows one to do a few other useful things like toggle between preferred audio genders.
Yes, it does that for me. But yes, I'd appreciate having that option. The reason is that the TTS - as good as it is - in some cases is much less clear in pronouncing especially the tones.
I don't know how popular it would be. But I doubt toggling toggling between preferred audio gender as part of a menu would be more popular. After all with "alternate" one can have the second gender anyway with just another push of the speaker button. Whereas for toggling between TTS and syllable-by-syllable one currently has to go to settings.
So in my opinion to hear the other gender's audio once in a while the "alternate" setting does the job perfectly (I am using it very often) and for a permanent change of audio gender it's ok to go to settings. In my opinion much more often than to permanently change the audio gender one wants to hear the syllable-by-syllable instead of the TTS if the latter is not clear enough.
If you insist that an easy access to a permanent change of audio gender is necessary and you put that functionality into a menu with the long-press gesture and you also add the toggling between TTS and syllable-by-syllable there, it would still be better than always go in settings for the latter.
I don't know how popular it would be. But I doubt toggling toggling between preferred audio gender as part of a menu would be more popular. After all with "alternate" one can have the second gender anyway with just another push of the speaker button. Whereas for toggling between TTS and syllable-by-syllable one currently has to go to settings.
So in my opinion to hear the other gender's audio once in a while the "alternate" setting does the job perfectly (I am using it very often) and for a permanent change of audio gender it's ok to go to settings. In my opinion much more often than to permanently change the audio gender one wants to hear the syllable-by-syllable instead of the TTS if the latter is not clear enough.
If you insist that an easy access to a permanent change of audio gender is necessary and you put that functionality into a menu with the long-press gesture and you also add the toggling between TTS and syllable-by-syllable there, it would still be better than always go in settings for the latter.
It's more that I'd like to reserve the ability to use that long-press command for other things in the future - toggling between Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, which would certainly have a lot of use since that too has to go through settings as it stands now. And perhaps also other dialects or alternate voices at some point. Putting this single command in a long-press now would mean that if we ever wanted to add other options to that long-press in the future we'd have to make this particular option worse by adding an extra tap - we tend to err on the side of designing defensively in cases like this, not going too far in making a particular feature easy-to-access so that we can guarantee it won't end up having to be made worse in a future release.
I see... you're right. With all these options it may be best to put them all into a long-press menu. In setting you can then still offer a choice what action the short-tap should trigger, right? So everybody can have there what (s)he needs most.
Oh... could the long-press menu not only have just a drop-down menu where one has to tap again for toggling between two settings (that's what you envision, right?) but additionally also a single-action functionality when I don't lift my finger after the long-press but then slide down and lift my finger at the one action I want to have triggered just once? This way the menu would have a toggle plus a once-only functionality. I think that would be great.
Oh... could the long-press menu not only have just a drop-down menu where one has to tap again for toggling between two settings (that's what you envision, right?) but additionally also a single-action functionality when I don't lift my finger after the long-press but then slide down and lift my finger at the one action I want to have triggered just once? This way the menu would have a toggle plus a once-only functionality. I think that would be great.
Sorry, by "customize" I thought you were just referring to the existing option in settings about whether you wanted it to play TTS or syllable-by-syllable.
As far as when, it's tough to say - depends on how many other requests we get and on whether or not anything else shows up (additional audio options, e.g.) that might make it a more critical feature for a larger number of people. I don't think it's likely to happen in 3.2.13 since we're already adding a couple of new things to that on top of what we did in Beta 1, but hopefully within the next few updates at least.
A draggable menu would be relatively easy to add to this control if we already added one somewhere else, but the work of adding the first draggable menu to our Android UI would be substantial and at the moment I'm not aware of anywhere where it would do enough good to justify the effort.
As far as when, it's tough to say - depends on how many other requests we get and on whether or not anything else shows up (additional audio options, e.g.) that might make it a more critical feature for a larger number of people. I don't think it's likely to happen in 3.2.13 since we're already adding a couple of new things to that on top of what we did in Beta 1, but hopefully within the next few updates at least.
A draggable menu would be relatively easy to add to this control if we already added one somewhere else, but the work of adding the first draggable menu to our Android UI would be substantial and at the moment I'm not aware of anywhere where it would do enough good to justify the effort.