10/22/2016

[Viewer Plugin] Text to Speech - MobileRead Forums

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04-03-2016, 11:18 PM

#1

chye

[Viewer Plugin] Text to Speech

Junior Member

This is a very simple plugin that adds TTS to Calibre's ebook viewer.

Posts: 3
Karma: 10
Join Date: Apr 2016
Device: Kobo Glo HD

I just wrote it up this weekend, so consider it a very rough alpha. Requires SAPI 5, so only works on
Windows.
There are some other great existing TTS programs, like Balabolka, but I love Calibre's bookmarks
and such, so I wanted to see if I could integrate it into the viewer.
Features:
- Press Play to start reading at the top of the visible page, or resume from last paused position
- Highlights the currently read paragraph and scrolls it into view if needed
(Note: This works better in flow mode. On paged mode, the bottom part of the paragraph tends to be
clipped. )
- Select mode: When select mode is enabled, click on any paragraph to start reading from that
paragraph
- Customize voice options and hotkeys in plugin config
Attached Files
TTS Ebook Viewer.zip (48.6 KB, 802 views)

Last edited by chye; 04-05-2016 at 03:13 AM.

04-04-2016, 08:53 AM

jackie_w
Wizard

#2

Hi chye,
Well done for trying to add a new feature for all calibre users
early days but thought I'd give some initial feedback ...

I appreciate this is very

Posts: 3,721
Karma: 6953388

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[Viewer Plugin] Text to Speech - MobileRead Forums

Join Date: Sep 2009

Location: UK
Device: Sony PRS-350, Kobo
AuraHD/Aura6"/AuraH2O/GloHD/AuraOne

To make it more useable I would need to be able to select which of my several installed
Voices to use. I don't think I could tolerate the default Microsoft voice for very long. Being
able to choose the reading speed would also be useful. Do you have plans to add anything
like this using the standard plugin Config facility?

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04-04-2016, 11:50 AM

chye
Junior Member

Posts: 3
Karma: 10
Join Date: Apr 2016
Device: Kobo Glo HD

#3
Quote:

Originally Posted by jackie_w

Hi chye,
Well done for trying to add a new feature for all calibre users
early days but thought I'd give some initial feedback ...

I appreciate this is very

To make it more useable I would need to be able to select which of my several installed
Voices to use. I don't think I could tolerate the default Microsoft voice for very long. Being
able to choose the reading speed would also be useful. Do you have plans to add anything
like this using the standard plugin Config facility?
Yep, these are all on my todo list to add.
You can also change the voice default in Control Panel > Speech Recognition > Text to Speech, but I
do plan to add in-app configuration as well.

04-04-2016, 01:38 PM

#4

jackie_w

Quote:

Wizard

Posts: 3,721
Karma: 6953388
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: UK
Device: Sony PRS-350, Kobo
AuraHD/Aura6"/AuraH2O/GloHD/AuraOne

Originally Posted by chye

You can also change the voice default in Control Panel > Speech Recognition > Text
to Speech ...
I did already try that, but the only Voice offered to me in Control Panel is Microsoft Anna.
Balabolka is able to see my AT&T and Nuance/Scansoft voices but not the Acapela ones.
TextAloud can see all of them. I'm guessing the Acapela ones are somehow linked/licensed
to TextAloud as that is where I bought them. I'm not sure why Control Panel doesn't see
voices which Balabolka has no trouble with. Any ideas?

04-04-2016, 10:21 PM

chye
Junior Member

Posts: 3
Karma: 10
Join Date: Apr 2016
Device: Kobo Glo HD

#5
Quote:

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I did already try that, but the only Voice offered to me in Control Panel is Microsoft Anna.
Balabolka is able to see my AT&T and Nuance/Scansoft voices but not the Acapela ones.
TextAloud can see all of them. I'm guessing the Acapela ones are somehow linked/licensed to
TextAloud as that is where I bought them. I'm not sure why Control Panel doesn't see voices
which Balabolka has no trouble with. Any ideas?
Hmm, that's interesting. For me, the other SAPI 5 voices that I have installed actually show up in
control panel options - I'm running windows 10 with SAPI 5.4, not sure what version you have.
I did have some time today to try to add config options for voice controls and hotkeys though, so you
can try the latest version if you like. I updated the top post.

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[Viewer Plugin] Text to Speech - MobileRead Forums

04-05-2016, 12:05 PM

I'm running Windows 7 64. I'm not sure which version of SAPI5 it is but I do know I haven't
knowingly manually installed a newer version than the one the PC came with in 2013.

jackie_w
Wizard

Posts: 3,721
Karma: 6953388
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: UK
Device: Sony PRS-350, Kobo
AuraHD/Aura6"/AuraH2O/GloHD/AuraOne

Anyway, the good news is that your new Config widget does now list all the same voices which
appear in Balabolka so, thak you for that
Just for your info: the voices which are listed in the plugin Config are all the ones which appear in
the registry under
Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\Tokens

namely, the voices from MS, AT&T and Scansoft.

The Acapela voices are not available in either Balabolka or your plugin. These voices appear in the
registry under
Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\NextUpTech\Acapela TTS Multimedia 6\Speechfonts

and also under

Code:

HKEY_USERS\a_very_long_key\Software\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\TokenEnums\Acapela Multimedia

ETA: It might be handy to be able to access Config via the Viewer rather than having to go back to
Prefs - Plugins - ... etc. and drill down several levels. However I don't know whether this is
feasible.
Last edited by jackie_w; 04-05-2016 at 12:09 PM. Reason: ETA

05-04-2016, 07:57 PM

BetterRed
null operator

Posts: 7,282
Karma: 6425993
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: NSW Australia
Device: none

#7

I've noticed the presence of the plugin has a significant impact on the viewer performance,
particularly when opening a file - eg from sub 2 seconds to 5-10 seconds, on the same epub on the
same drive - i.e. similar to doing an inline conversion of a non epub file.
I tried disabling the PI, that made no difference, and it didn't disappear from the tool bar as I
assumed it would.
BR

05-12-2016, 04:00 AM

kimreadsalot
Junior Member

Posts: 1
Karma: 10
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Alaska, USA
Device: kindle apps, kindles,
E-book reader on calibre,
Moon Reader, Tucan

#8

Hi, just a word of appreciation for making this plug in, after a little initial difficulty, I got it to work
just fine for me. After I upgraded Calibre to latest version, then it worked good for me, right now just
using stock voice Microsoft zira, although plan to try others soon. It has always annoyed me that
there is no simple way to TTS an ebook inside any ereader on my otherwise perfectly fine Surface
Pro 3. I installed Amiduos, and kindle app and got immersion reading working if there is an audible
version, but no way to listen with TTS for books that don't have Audible, and I like to read a lot of
indie writers who don't have audible support. This works. I will be following looking for updates.
Thank you again for developing this app.
Last edited by kimreadsalot; 05-12-2016 at 04:03 AM. Reason: additional information

07-02-2016, 04:21 PM

toomuchreading
Zealot

#9

Thank you so much for this plugin. It is great.

I did run across something that is strange though. The plugin will not work if you launch the ebook
viewer outside of Calibre. For example: I have an icon on my desktop pointing to the ebookviewer.exe file. When I click it, and the viewer launches, I open up a book, but I can't get the pluging
to work. If I open up Calibre, launch the viewer, the plugin works fine.
I'm using Calibre portable on a Windows 8 laptop.
As I said I can get the plugin to work, I just have to launch the viewer from within Calibre. I'm
wondering if something needs to be done to get the plugin to launch when the viewer is running
without the main Calibre program? Do you get the same behaviour?

Posts: 129
Karma: 1720
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Canada
Device: Toshiba e400, PRS-T1

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[Viewer Plugin] Text to Speech - MobileRead Forums

07-04-2016, 01:01 AM

#10

You are using calibre portable.

eschwartz
Ex-Helpdesk Junkie

calibre portable sets the configuration directory (which contains, among other things, the plugin) to a
portableized directory. But only if you use the main calibre program launcher.
When you run ebook-viewer on its own, it doesn't set the environment variable pointing to the
and ebook-viewer doesn't see the plugin in the default,
portableized configuration directory
installed location for the configuration directory.
If you set the CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY variable as instructed HERE, you can duplicate the
effects of the calibre-portable.exe launcher, and make the ebook-viewer portable as well.

Posts: 19,119
Karma: 82937363
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: The Beaten Path,
USA, Roundworld, This Side of
Infinity
Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7
(Wifi only)

07-04-2016, 09:22 AM

#11

Re not seeing all the voices, this is known issue with 64 bit windows (and has been for several
years...). You can run the alt control panel applet to get at the other ones,

Krazykiwi
Connoisseur

Posts: 72
Karma: 596562
Join Date: Jan 2013
Device: Too many random
androids to list

Windows\sysWOW64\speech\SpeechUX\SAPI.cpl (or whatever the path is on your version of

windows)
This will let you set the default voice to something other than Anna, hopefully.
(here's a TechNet post from 2009 about this exact thing (the answer, not the question)
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...set-as-default
If you search around, there's plenty on the topic, but no real fix other than "use the old control panel
applet".

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