[XB] Text to Speech: Read Aloud, Audio Playback & AI Voices [Paid] 1.1.2

[Painbaker]

Painbaker submitted a new resource:

[XB] Text to Speech - Adds text-to-speech functionality using the Web Speech API

Adds text-to-speech functionality using the Web Speech API.
Works in modern browsers that support the Web Speech API, such as Chrome and Firefox.

Text To Speech allows users to consume forum content in audio form instead of reading. This is useful for long discussions, background listening, and situations where reading is inconvenient or impossible.

Features​

• Voice Controls: Change voice, volume, pitch, and speech rate. Settings are saved in cookies...

Read more about this resource...

 

[PhineasD]

Works with Pwa?

 

[Painbaker]

Works with Pwa?

Depends on the operating system. All modern Android versions (at least 13 works) and iOS should work.

 

[Alpha1]

Does this work with @Bob 's addons?

 

[Bob]

Does this work with @Bob 's addons?

 

[Alpha1]

I bought it to try it, but it doesn't seem to work on Firefox/Opera/Chrome on Android. Is there something the user needs to do to enable it on Android? Or are these all Webview based and incompatible? It works on desktop and on Samsung android browser, but my main use case is for the most popular browsers on mobile.

The icon in posts is quite small and hard to hit on mobile. I'd like people with some sight impairment to be able to easily hit it.

When it works its really nice and useful. I'd love to be able to listen to reports, tickets, UBS comments.
Most voices sound a bit synthetic. If its possible to add some more natural voices then that would be nice.

 

[Alpha1]

Its too bad that the icons / links for the function display on browsers were it does not function. Even though this functionality does not seem to function on most browsers, it would still be nice to offer the functionality on those. But adding malfunctioning icons and links just seems buggy and it seems better to disable it.

 

[Painbaker]

Does this work with @Bob 's addons?

When it works its really nice and useful. I'd love to be able to listen to reports, tickets, UBS comments.

I'll take a look into it.

I bought it to try it, but it doesn't seem to work on Firefox/Opera/Chrome on Android. Is there something the user needs to do to enable it on Android? Or are these all Webview based and incompatible? It works on desktop and on Samsung android browser, but my main use case is for the most popular browsers on mobile.

It depends on OS and browser version. According to Mozilla docs, it's:

Web Speech API - Web APIs | MDN

The Web Speech API enables you to incorporate voice data into web apps. The Web Speech API has two parts: SpeechSynthesis (Text-to-Speech), and SpeechRecognition (Asynchronous Speech Recognition.)

developer.mozilla.org

The icon in posts is quite small and hard to hit on mobile. I'd like people with some sight impairment to be able to easily hit it.

This can be changed in the style settings:

Most voices sound a bit synthetic. If its possible to add some more natural voices then that would be nice.

This add-on supports only the Web Speech API.

Using external TTS services would add significant complexity, including the need for a proxy layer. Since most of these services charge per usage, enabling them for guests would likely be too costly.

 

[Alpha1]

It depends on OS and browser version. According to Mozilla docs, it's:

Weird. That means it should work on Chrome/Firefox on android. Can this be a style compatibility issue? I'm using PixelExit XenBase / Nova style.

Would it be possible to hide the functionality on Opera Android/Webview?

This can be changed in the style settings:

icon size setting is not there:
style-properties/group&group=pb_texttospeech
Is this only available in development mode and needs to be made available in normal made?

 

[Painbaker]

Weird. That means it should work on Chrome/Firefox on android. Can this be a style compatibility issue? I'm using PixelExit XenBase / Nova style.

I don't think it's a style conflict.
Make sure that webspeech api is supported by your browser: https://leaonline.github.io/easy-speech/
There is a detailed debug log below.

Would it be possible to hide the functionality on Opera Android/Webview?

I will add it in the next update.

con size setting is not there:
style-properties/group&group=pb_texttospeech
Is this only available in development mode and needs to be made available in normal made?

Sorry, this was added in a newer version that has not yet been published.
Until then, you can use this in Extra.less:

.actionBar-action--speech:before
{
    font-size: 15px;
}

.actionBar-action--speechPause:before
{
    font-size: 15px;
}

.actionBar-action--speechResume:before
{
    font-size: 15px;
}

 

[Painbaker]

Painbaker updated [XB] Text to Speech with a new update entry:

1.0.0 Patch Level 2

• Added option to hide TTS elements for browsers without SpeechSynthesis support
• Fixed "Speech all" speaking the first element twice

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Painbaker]

Painbaker updated [XB] Text to Speech with a new update entry:

1.1.0

View attachment 341850

More voices, more content, and more control!​

This update introduces OpenAI-powered text-to-speech with server-side audio caching, expands support for additional content types, and includes several playback and highlighting improvements.

New Features​

• Added optional OpenAI text-to-speech support as an alternative to browser voices...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[fionix]

is there a DEMO anywhere I can see how it works?

 

[Painbaker]

is there a DEMO anywhere I can see how it works?

Lorem Ipsum

What is Lorem Ipsum? Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since 1966, when designers at Letraset and James Mosley, the librarian at St Bride Printing Library in London, took a 1914 Cicero...

demo.xenbaker.com

 

[fionix]

Just both the add on:
1. Total long load time and the page times out by large articles of 3000 - 4000 words
2. No options to set the permission to either only threads, post or articles or to a particular forum node.
3. starts the AI speech and then it stops and there comes a warning you have to wait 90 seconds before to continue.

testing a little more before uninstalling this, it's taking a huge amount of server load and does not qualify for what we need it to.

 

[Painbaker]

1. Total long load time and the page times out by large articles of 3000 - 4000 words

3. starts the AI speech and then it stops and there comes a warning you have to wait 90 seconds before to continue.

I'll add a preload of the next section while the current one is playing to smooth out the waiting time and add an option to use compressed AAC instead of the MP3 format to reduce traffic.

But 90 seconds is too long. I tested it on my production site and didn't notice any such delays with large amounts of text (same 4000-word Lorem Ipsum). Could it be that your server has a slow connection to OpenAI servers?

2. No options to set the permission to either only threads, post or articles or to a particular forum node.

Will be added in next update

 

[Painbaker]

Painbaker updated [XB] Text to Speech with a new update entry:

1.1.1

Smarter OpenAI Speech, Better Performance!​

This update brings significant improvements to the OpenAI text-to-speech experience with smarter caching, faster playback, more flexible permissions, and enhanced administration tools.

New Features​

• Replaced the content type option with separate permissions for each supported content...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[fionix]

I'll add a preload of the next section while the current one is playing to smooth out the waiting time and add an option to use compressed AAC instead of the MP3 format to reduce traffic.

But 90 seconds is too long. I tested it on my production site and didn't notice any such delays with large amounts of text (same 4000-word Lorem Ipsum). Could it be that your server has a slow connection to OpenAI servers?



Will be added in next update

Don't know it is Xenforo Cloud, not sure if they have a problem there.

 

[Painbaker]

Just both the add on:
1. Total long load time and the page times out by large articles of 3000 - 4000 words
2. No options to set the permission to either only threads, post or articles or to a particular forum node.
3. starts the AI speech and then it stops and there comes a warning you have to wait 90 seconds before to continue.

testing a little more before uninstalling this, it's taking a huge amount of server load and does not qualify for what we need it to.

Please try the latest update

You'll need to experiment with the OpenAI TTS character limit settings to find a balance between the first loading time and loading for the next chunk.
You can also switch the OpenAI audio format to Opus for better compression if you don't have many users on iOS/macOS.

 

[fionix]

I don't think the problem is the OpenAI character limit. The add-on's architecture is the issue.

It generates audio in small chunks while playback is already running instead of generating the complete audio file first and caching it. This results in long loading times, interrupted playback, unnecessary server load, and poor performance on long form articles.

For a forum with 3,000-10,000 word guides, this simply isn't a practical solution.