PLS Dicitionary for Ivona Voices Excellent!

[tomotello]

I got the PLS Dictionary for Ivona Voices today from readtaclearly.com http://readtaclearly.com/nv.html
Excellent! It works perfect and is a smart example to extend it with my own requirements. Thanks a lot for this free contribution!

Now, to improve my workflow I've researched for SAPI / SSML Editors or plugins to HTML/Web editors with SAPI/SSML support (auto-complete, auto-tagging of selections with hot-keys etc.). There seems nothing available at a reasonable price.
However, what I needed I've done now by myself with Sublime Editor.
In combination with the IVONA Reader clipboard watcher I got the smooth workflow I was looking for. Editing - listening -editing - listening quite efficient.
On the way to get there I had to sort out the specifications in a spread sheet which compares the SAPI / SSML implementation of IVONA Reader and Textaloud. As I'm also a Textaloud user since many years I wanted to stay compatible whenever possible (I just like some additional SSML support in IVONA reader ... and from my personal impression IVONA has a slightly smoother audio processing).

The comparison might be useful for others too. I've uploaded it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4uscf2u146vt ... bDyCk2Dcla

The sublime snippets are there of course as well - if someone has the same requirement here. Ideas for other or existing approaches to improve the work-flow for creation of SAPI SSML texts are welcome.
I'm curious as well if there are any other PLS dictionaries available for dedicated areas, such as in my case music. It could save me some time by extending the ivona.pls according to my needs.

Cheers, Thomas

[Percy Henry]

Greetings Thomas,

The information you provided could prove very useful and provide a good resource.

FYI: You can create a signature to be used with your postings. Your signature may include your web site's url and other information you find useful.

User Control Panel ----> Profile ----> Edit signature (The UCP is in the upper right).

P.S. I have waged my own solo campaign to get TextAloud to start using some form of SSML.

[daveh]

Percy, Many thanks for this complementary dictionary .... which I agree is excellent and very generous.

I note that you use ipa rather than x-sampa, even though some of the symbols are not available on a standard keyboard. But one can of course copy and paste the symbols in the dictionary.

I have a document from Ivona giving x-sampa examples e.g.
<lexeme><grapheme>alcaraz</grapheme><phoneme>@|l|k|@|r|E@|s|</phoneme></lexeme>

I note that the phonemes are separated by | in this example.

I'm not too clear about the various separators in your dictionary.
Could you perhaps explain the use of the symbols ˈ . (.) and any others I may have missed?

I hope Jim at TextAloud gets around to implementing this approach soon .... it seems to simplify things quite a lot!

Much appreciated
Dave

[Percy Henry]

Hi Dave,

I do use all of the three ways of representing pronunciation (x-sampa, ipa and alias) in the PLS dictionary. You can find some examples of x-sampa entries near the top of the PLS dictionary.

The symbol . is a syllable separator (I do not believe leaving them out will affect the pronunciation but for me it makes the pronunciation clearer).

The symbol (.) is supposed to represent a pause, (..) a longer pause, etc. I am not very sure how well this works in practice.