Feature Suggestions

[Joeguy]

I have a few suggestions that I feel would make this great application even better.

First, I would like to see a "hover" mode, which would be a combination of always-on-top along with an input blocker. I use the program a lot for proofreading, and it would be helpful if I could have the proofreader appear above my browser/word processor (which I currently accomplish by using PowerMenu), but prevent me to accidentally bringing the window into the foreground and overwrite the currently spoken phrase with whatever I mean to type in the foreground window. This could be done with some kind of content lock button on the toolbar.

Next, this is somewhat related to the previous point. If while I'm listening to the proofreading I notice a typo 2 lines below, it would be nice if I was able to correct it without having to stop/pause the reading. I'm not certain what the best way to implement this would be, though.

With the ability to use regex/masks for the pronunciation editor (which is probably my favourite feature of this application), it would be nice if you could see the text as it's being sent to the speech engine. I was thinking maybe having an "advanced" view, where the window would be split into 2 panes, one of which is the actual text, while the other is the processed text, once all the regex and other pronuncation rules are applied. This could be an easy way of checking if your regex's are applied properly (without having to have that particular section of the text read).

Some other random suggestions would be to include a save text, and possibly a pronunciation editor button on the toolbar, and the ability to hide the speech engine panel (everything below the toolbar).

[Joeguy]

After reading the other suggestion thread, I just realized that I should have posted this on the same thread to avoid cluttering the forum. My apologies. If a mod could copy the initial post over to the other thread, and zap this one, it'd be much appreciated.

Sorry for creating extra work for you guys .

[kdwhite]

More stuff coming, but you do use the proofread hotkey, right?

[Joeguy]

No, I actually wasn't aware of that feature, till you pointed out. Not a very intuitive place to hide that option though.

After playing around with it for a bit, on the surface it seems to satisfy most of what I posted in the suggestion, but after some experimentation, it seems pretty glitchy, and somewhat cumbersome.

The always on top option is there, however it seems to stop functioning after I move the window. It gets rid of the speech engine settings, which is good, but it also ditches the toolbar (which I would most likely keep on).

You can't use the window to edit the contents. I know it's because you can proofread contents from other applications as well, and the proofreader has no way to interact with the other app to change the contents. So in this sense, this is probably the best that can be expected from the proofreader when reading contents from other applications.

But if we're using the function to proofread textaloud contents, it adds a lot of unnecessary keystrokes. Instead of my ideal scenario, where I see a mistake 2 lines below, I move my mouse over there, correct the mistake on the fly without having to stop the reading... I would have to select text, start the proofreader, and when I see the mistake, exit out of the window (which puts the focus on the voice selection dropdown menu for some reason, so the instinct to mouse wheel down will change the voice), find where the mistake was, correct it (make sure to clear selection beforehand, as not to overwrite the selected portion), reselect the rest of the text and resume proofreading.

With the normal window, I pause reading via hotkey, correct mistake, and resume reading. No searching for where the mistake was in a possibly large selected text, no fiddling with constantly reslecting the text, and less of chance I'll end up overwriting text by accident. Compared to this, the speech engine settings taking up half of the resized window, and using a 3rd party "always on top" app seems like a minor inconvenience.

[Claudio_porcellana]

please add a pause for piece of writing as brackets and conjunctions as "e" and "o", and similar

and, if possible, add an Editor to educate wrong pronunciations ...


for example, words that end in "ia" like letargia, are all wrong spelled: accent in the wrong place, wrongly syllabified

Claudio

Jim Bretti just answered that The pronunciation editor may be used to insert pauses after commas, colons, and other punctuation marks in your text, etc....

BUT this is unuseful to me as I'm a translator and I need simply a double check, i.e. I've no time to add tags to the text !
this is why I would prefer a more automatic option ...

regards

Claudio

[Claudio_porcellana]

I found the Educator and some fix by myself, so I post them here as a reference for other newbies ...


I opened the Pronunciation Editor, and added: "{{Pause=0,25}} o"
now, the system adds a 0,25 seconds pause before any "o" (conjunction)
unluckily, the trick doesn't work for brackets ...


another fix
the word "corporeo" were pronounced with the accent on letter "e" that is wrong in italian
I added the pronounciation: corpòreo
now, the accent is on the right letter!

and another fix
polidipsia had the accent on the second letter "i" that is wrong in italian
then, I added another "i" after the third "i": polidipsiia
so, now, the accent is on this third fake "i" and the pronounciation is right!

Claudio

please add a pause for piece of writing as brackets and conjunctions as "e" and "o", and similar

and, if possible, add an Editor to educate wrong pronunciations ...


for example, words that end in "ia" like letargia, are all wrong spelled: accent in the wrong place, wrongly syllabified

Claudio

Jim Bretti just answered that The pronunciation editor may be used to insert pauses after commas, colons, and other punctuation marks in your text, etc....

BUT this is unuseful to me as I'm a translator and I need simply a double check, i.e. I've no time to add tags to the text !
this is why I would prefer a more automatic option ...

regards

Claudio