Eliminate '.' in speech text

[NSoiffer]

Description

I believe '.' and ',' were added to speech strings to cause the speech engine to add a little pause at that point. SSML is now being used, so the punctuation is not really appropriate as the times in the break are more precise. Furthermore, sometimes the speech engine will speak the ., which is bad.

An example where that happens is when a common fraction is spoken:

five eights <mark name="83earh"/> . <break time="150ms"/>

Perhaps because the . is along between two tags, it gets spoken by aws polly as "dot".

I suggest that all punctuation should be deleted. If SSML is not being used, then longer breaks should be converted to . and shorter ones to ,. That would be an easy thing to do in the code.

[arnog]

I believe you're correct that the dot is voiced when it is in between two tags, or not clearly the end of a sentence (i.e. with a space before it instead of a word).
That said, a "." serves two purposes: adding a pause, but it also changes the intonation of the utterance, using a falling intonation. All the dots having to do with a pause should be removed and replaced with an appropriate tag. I'm not sure about those controlling the intonation.

[NSoiffer]

Thanks for the info -- I didn't know you were trying to achieve a fall intonation with some of the '.'s. I'm having trouble figuring out when they would be appropriate. Did you have some internal decision process that would lead you to adding one? Neil

…

On Sat, Jun 16, 2018 at 11:14 AM, Arno Gourdol ***@***.***> wrote: I believe you're correct that the dot is voiced when it is in between two tags, or not clearly the end of a sentence (i.e. with a space before it instead of a word). That said, a "." serves two purposes: adding a pause, but it also changes the intonation of the utterance, using a falling intonation. All the dots having to do with a pause should be removed and replaced with an appropriate tag. I'm not sure about those controlling the intonation. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#84 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABeWbGDn6X-jDXILK9Km5A6nV_nBV5wUks5t9UsTgaJpZM4UqV-T> .

[arnog]

I believe the dots have been eliminated. If there are still some issues, please open a new issue with the specific cases that are causing problems.