Text-2-Speech (TTS) for Android released

plusminus · by **plusminus** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 8:58 pm

Hello Community,

today I got contacted by Charles Chen ( clcworld.net/about.html ) who informed me that his TextToSpeech-Library is going public in these minutes. Waiting for the website to go public.

The apk. is already available on the market, filed under "Applications-->Software-Libraries-->Text-To-Speech Library"

[Update]
See the source: http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
[/Update]

/plusminus for anddev.org

MrSnowflake · by **MrSnowflake** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:00 pm

That's great news!

I'm interested to see how we can use it's functionality.

plusminus · by **plusminus** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:50 pm

MrSnowflake wrote:That's great news!

I'm interested to see how we can use it's functionality.

The source is up!

If I know how to utilize his lib, I'll post a short tutorial.

Best Regards,
plusminus

polarbear · by **polarbear** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 9:31 pm

Did you get the TTS code to work?

plusminus · by **plusminus** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 5:14 am

polarbear wrote:Did you get the TTS code to work?

Yes, I got it working.

1. I installed the library from the market.
2. I added the Stub of the TTS-Lib as a 'Library' to my Android-Project (to the Buildpath).
3. I checked out the http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/compass/ to see how it works and derived it into my app.

@2 I queried Charles if he will put the Stub to the Download-Page: http://code.google.com/p/eyes-free/downloads/list
[Update]
Here is the stub:
http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/svn/tru ... y_stub.jar
[/Update]

Ask if sth. is missing

Best Regards,
Nicolas

polarbear · by **polarbear** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 6:03 am

How did you install the library?

clc · by **clc** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 8:02 pm

You install it by going to Market > Applications > Software libraries

Or, just install an app that uses the TTS - that will cause a prompt to appear asking you to install the TTS library.

BTW, I posted a hello world tutorial on using the TTS:
http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/svn/tru ... orial.html

polarbear · by **polarbear** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 9:11 pm

Thank you clc and plusminus.

Is it possible to install the library in the emulator?

clc · by **clc** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 9:44 pm

Yes, it works.

I recommend you start the emulator with an SD card. If you don't, you'll be forced to listen to all your strings spelled out to you and that's not very pleasant.

For starting the emulator with an SD card image, please see:
http://code.google.com/android/referenc ... tml#sdcard

polarbear · by **polarbear** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:35 am

Hi clc,

Do you have to register in the Android Market so the emulator downloads the TTS library? I'm getting an indefinite loop in the LogCat screen displaying, "Continuing to wait for key to be dispatched...Key dispatching timed out sending..."

Thank you.

clc · by **clc** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:42 am

You should check out the project and just build a debug version of the TTS yourself. The ant build.xml file should make that very easy, just do the following steps:

1. Check out the project
2. Change the sdk-folder of the build.xml under the tts directory to point at where you have the Android sdk.
3. Start up the emulator (and again, you should do it so that you start up with an SD card image).
4. From the commandline, go to the tts directory and type "ant".

The emulator doesn't contain Market, so I think building your own is the easiest way to get that onto the emulator.
See: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/A ... 742c&hl=en

BTW, if you do this on the emulator and you don't hear speech and you get a VERY long dump of green text in logcat, try deleting your SD card image and creating a new one. I've had this happen a few times on the emulator where something goes very wrong with the voice data. Creating a new SD card image forces a redownload of the voice data, so that worksaround the issue. This does NOT happen on actual devices and only happens on the emulator; still trying to figure out what the issue on the emulator is.

polarbear · by **polarbear** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 4:29 am

When I used the "ant" on the command line I got that is not recognized. What do I need to do?

Thank you again...

clc · by **clc** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 4:37 am

Sounds like you either don't have ant installed or your path to ant is missing/incorrect.

If you don't remember setting up ant, then you definitely don't have it as it's a separate tool and not something required when setting up the Android SDK with Eclipse.

Please set up ant by following the instructions on the ant homepage here:
http://ant.apache.org/

plusminus · by **plusminus** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 7:18 am

If someone got problems on actually using the library, I might be able to help

Btw, here is a quick and dirty hack to check whether the TTS library is installed or not:

Syntax: [ Download ] [ Hide ]

Using java Syntax Highlighting

        public static boolean isTTSAvailable(final Context ctx){
            // Initialize the TTS, run the callback after the binding is successful
                ServiceConnection sc = new ServiceConnection() {
              public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
 
              }
 
              public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name) {
 
              }
            };
 
            final Intent intent = new Intent("android.intent.action.USE_TTS");
            intent.addCategory("android.intent.category.TTS");
            
            // Binding will fail only if the TTS doesn't exist;
            final boolean success = ctx.bindService(intent, sc, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);
            ctx.unbindService(sc);
                
                return success;
        }
Parsed in 0.031 seconds,  using GeSHi 1.0.8.4

clc · by **clc** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:45 pm

Hi,

I just created a new mailing list for devs interested in keeping up with the latest changes to the TTS. It's here at: http://groups.google.com/group/tts-for-android so please join it if you're interested in using the TTS.

Speaking of changes, some of the upcoming changes include multilingual support (already checked into the project) and some bug fixes to make the data downloading process smoother. I'll also be posting preview APKs to give anyone interested a chance to try out the new version (and speak up if there are any major issues) before it goes fully live on the Market.

-Charles

Text-2-Speech (TTS) for Android released

Text-2-Speech (TTS) for Android released

TTS

Re: TTS

TTS

New mailing list for TTS created

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