Reduce the size of eSpeak Variants menu

[nvaccessAuto]

Reported by jonsd on 2010-02-14 17:30
NVDA includes a large number of eSpeak voice variants, many of which have been contributed by NVDA users.

However this results in a large Variants menu, which can be confusing to new NVDA users. In particular the "none" option is difficult to find. The menu does not appear to be in any order. Could "none" be made the first item in the menu?

I suggest that the eSpeak Variants menu is reduced to only a few popular and useful Variants. The additional Variants could be displayed either from a "More" menu topion, or perhaps from a check-box.

This will need a method to distinguish between the two categories of voice Variants.

Suggestion. eSpeak could use the "languages" field in the Voices List entry. Currently this contains a "priority" (a single byte) followed by the string "variant". If this priority has a value greater than 5 (which is the default) then the it is not shown in the main Variants menu. Also if the "languages" field is an empty string (i.e. a zero byte).

This priority is set in the eSpeak voice variant files, using a line such as:

language variant 5

where '5' in this example is the priority. If no number is given, then the default is 5.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 1 by beqa on 2013-05-09 12:50
duplicate of 560
Changes:
Added labels: duplicate
State: closed

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 2 by Bernd on 2013-05-09 13:09
Variants and voices are two different things, so I'd reopen this ticket if I could as it's definitely not a dupplicate.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 3 by briang1 on 2013-05-09 14:13
So why would one want to do this exactly? Its not an issue for me, how many times do you change the varient in any case but having a lot to choose from is great at the start.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 4 by jteh on 2013-05-10 00:24
Reopening as per comment:2. I don't think we should reduce the size, though. If we're going to do that, we may as well just remove them. However, it might be worth at least sorting them alphabetically.
Changes:
Removed labels: duplicate
State: reopened

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 5 by camlorn on 2013-05-11 02:40
I agree with making none first and arranging alphabetically.
I would also say that changing them to listboxes would be a good idea. Why: because, in listboxes, you can type the name of an item to move to it. This is in newer versions of windows--I don't recall if XP and earlier let you do it--but is super convenient for a lot of things like this. Not 100% sure it's any listbox, but it appears to be.

[LeonarddeR]

I also agree with alphabetizing the variants. Also, I guess it is impossible with a combo box, but it would help if we'd be able to use navigation by typing letters. To elaborate: when the first item in the combo box is selected and you quickly press m and a in succession, you end up at a variant starting with the letter a. In a list view, you'd probably be able to type m a x in quick succession to have max selected as the preferred variant.

Additional note, the idea to change some wx.Choice widgets to wx.ListBox (#6100) is probably not the way to go here.

[bhavyashah]

While I agree that the Variants combo box's items should be alphabetically sorted, I am not convinced that None should be placed first. In case of the Synthesizer and Braille Display combo boxes too, No speech and No Braille is placed as the last item. Placing None in the Variants combo box at the end sounds both consistent and intuitive to me. Thoughts?

[fisher729]

I am also in favour of an alphabetical sorting of eSpeak variants, and putting none as the last item in the list

[Adriani90]

@fisher729 why putting none on the list? at least a variant needs to be sellected, so none does not make sense. In that case you could switch to "no synthesizer" in the change synthesizer dialog.

[Adriani90]

cc: @CyrilleB79 I think you did a similar alphabetical ordering for the language list. Right? Is it possible to do this also for the eSpeak variant list?
Note that this also impacts the synth settings ring, not only the combo box in the speech settings category.

[fisher729]

Hi.

@Adriani90, I seriously urge you to look thoroughly at the aspects of the issue that is being commented on before commenting. Have noticed this in other cases. Do your own tests and try to reproduce the issue/look at the `different variables.

None is a variant of eSpeak, that actually makes a sound. In English, and I suspect in other languages, none is the first variant listed.

Part of this issue seems to have been solved, also, as in English, the variants seem to have been ordered alphabetically. I notice after none, there is Andrea, then Andy, and so on. After Whisper, there is Female Whisper, though. Perhaps they can be renamed to Whisper 1 or Whisper 2, or Male Whisper and Female Whisper.

[Adriani90]

Oh, I should have tested in english, when testin in german it sounded to me like a human name :))

[CyrilleB79]

tt

cc: @CyrilleB79 I think you did a similar alphabetical ordering for the language list. Right? Is it possible to do this also for the eSpeak variant list?

Having looked at this quickly:

1. Exception made of the "none" option that appears first (what is intended), the list is already almost ordered unless some items like female whisper or fast test.
2. The sorting key seems to be the variant file names (e.g. "whisperf" for "female whisper") rather than the presentation name, hence the slight issues in this list sorting.
   It should be doable to sort the variant dictionary using the variant presentation name rather than the variant file name. This would lead to a situation where "female whisper" and "whisper" would be dissociated.

Would such a solution really close this issue? The topic seems to have deviated a bit.