OpenEVV SAPI5 1.2.3: the community pronunciation dictionary for English

OpenEVV SAPI5 1.2.3 adds the community pronunciation dictionary for English: the IBMTTS community's fixes to how the Eloquence voice pronounces words, which you can switch on and off in OpenEVV Configuration and bring up to date from GitHub with one button.

Installing

Download OpenEVV-SAPI5-Setup-1.2.3.exe and run it. You can run it with your screen reader running: nothing is closed and Windows does not need to restart. It installs over earlier versions and keeps your settings and languages. A program that was already running when you installed, such as your screen reader, keeps speaking as before until you close it and start it again. Windows may show "Windows protected your PC" for a new unsigned download: choose More info, then Run anyway.

SHA-256 of the installer: f3bb2f986f7a80d6232988e6cedf09748bf7fb8f9f5e0008df7cacb33f64c435

What's new

• The community pronunciation dictionary, for English only. It is eigencrow/IBMTTSDictionaries (public domain): a main, a root and an abbreviation dictionary of US English pronunciations, installed with OpenEVV. Only the US English voices use it. No other language is touched: the repository's German files are neither installed nor read, and the 145 languages read by eSpeak NG are unchanged. Your own dictionaries (Languages page) are read after it, so an entry of yours wins over the community's for the same word.
• A new page in OpenEVV Configuration: Community dictionary.
  • Use the community pronunciation dictionary switches it on and off. It is on by default, and the change is heard on the next thing any program says.
  • The page says which version is in use, and where it came from.
  • Check for a newer version and install it asks GitHub for the newest commit of the project and, if you do not have it, downloads it, checks every file, and installs it for every voice, with nothing to restart. If anything goes wrong, it says why and leaves what you have alone. OpenEvvConfig.exe --update-community-dictionary does the same without a window.
• A fix the dictionary needed, in the 64-bit US English engine. The engine's memory allocator slowed down with every entry it kept: reading the dictionary's 69,040 root entries took 63 seconds in a 64-bit program (86 ms in a 32-bit one), long enough for OpenEVV to give up on the voice. It now takes about a tenth of a second. The change picks the same memory as before for every request (24 random streams of 60,000 requests and six of 400,000 give identical addresses) and the audio of the rebuilt module is identical, sample for sample, to 1.2.2's on 34 sentences of US English. Only the 64-bit US English module was rebuilt.

Tested before release: sapi_test in 64-bit, 64-bit under CET and 32-bit (72 checks each, 24 of them new for the dictionary: on and off, under your own entries, English abbreviations, German and other languages unchanged, and updates installed while a voice is speaking, with a damaged zip, a file that is not a zip and a file that is not a dictionary each refused), 740 of 740 voices, all 145 eSpeak NG packs, the accessibility walk of OpenEVV Configuration (five pages now) and of the installer, and a real download from GitHub checked byte for byte.

Full details are in CHANGELOG.md.

The language packs and samples zips of 1.2.0 are unchanged and still current: v1.2.0.