Long assistant replies are truncated on screen while TTS reads them: auto-scroll or paging?

[doctorwho68]

Hi, and many thanks to HuskerMinion for TECHO5, it's a great project!

I'm using an Echo Show 5 (2nd gen) with the latest release of TECHO5 as a Home Assistant Assist satellite, with a local LLM as the conversation agent.

When the assistant's reply is long, the text shown on the screen is cut off while the voice keeps reading the full answer.
I suppose that currently there's not a way to handle this, so I'd like to suggest one of these:

• slow automatic vertical scrolling of the reply, ideally paced to the duration of the TTS audio;
• paging: split the text into screen-sized pages that change as the audio plays;
• optionally a setting to enable/disable it, so the current behaviour stays the default.

I'm not a programmer, so I can't offer a patch, but I'm happy to test any build and report back.

Thanks again!

[HuskerMinion]

Thank you, that means a lot! You're right: a long reply drops to a smaller font once, and then it's cut off. Paging it in time with the voice is a good idea, and I'll look at it for a coming release. I'll let you know here when there's a build to try.

[HuskerMinion]

This is in v1.6.14. A long answer is now shown a page at a time, turning as the voice reads it, on the Show and the Spot. A page with more after it ends in "…". Please let me know how the timing feels on your device.

[doctorwho68]

Thanks A LOT! I suppose there's a fixed timer for paging? Because page changes before the voice reaches the last line of the first screen, I think that it's related to which TTS service is used and its reading speed. Now I'm on NABU, it reads a bit slowly in Italian (my native language). I shall try other TTS, but perhaps a 2 more seconds of waiting may synchronize the output better. By the way, thanks for your quick commitment, HuskerMinion!

[HuskerMinion]

Thanks, glad it helps! You're right, it isn't a fixed timer: it goes by the reply's audio, but while the audio is still coming in it guesses how fast the voice reads, and a slower voice like Nabu in Italian runs behind that guess. I'll have it wait for the voice instead of running ahead, and post here when it's in.

[HuskerMinion]

This is in v1.6.15: the pages now wait for the voice instead of running ahead, so a slower voice like Nabu in Italian should keep each page up until it's read. Let me know how it feels.

[doctorwho68]

Thanks again! Now it seems a little too slow in reading while the page flips! 😂 . By the way, (IMHO) it is quite satisfactory as it is. Otherwise, it should require a setting to "fine tune" the delay, like min-med-max. But I think that you have much more important things to do first!
Again: THANK YOU for Techo5... a fantastic piece of work! 😀

[HuskerMinion]

Thank you! Glad it's close. I'll leave it as it is for now, and if others find it slow too, a setting for it is an easy add.