Text-to-speech TTS for iOS

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Simon Knight
Posts: 845
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2009 11:41 am
Location: Gunthorpe, North Lincs, UK

Re: Text-to-speech TTS for iOS

Post by Simon Knight » Tue Feb 18, 2020 10:14 pm

Hi Paul,
Also, with Objective C FFI and creating global objects there is some situations where you want 'ObjCRetainedId' instead of the regular 'ObjCId'. This is somewhat of a mystery to me,
Its a mystery to me as well and I am mostly following the same "suck it and see" policy!

I think I read that the alloc method call can cause the problem you mention but I find the documentation is quite confusing. The thing that worries me is that my code creates a memory leak but I wrote to Livecode support and the message was don't worry, so who knows?

It would be great if Livecode central provided some documentation that showed the ref count of objects as they get allocated, initialised and assigned to native variables.
best wishes
Skids

trevix
Posts: 958
Joined: Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:25 pm
Location: Italy
Contact:

Re: Text-to-speech TTS for iOS

Post by trevix » Wed Feb 19, 2020 1:04 am

Thaaanks so much, Simon. You are great.
I took the liberty to add some comments for the LC dictionary and to return the voice language identifier together with the voice name, so we know better why the speaker (mostly women...?) sometime is so bad.
Here is it with my additions:

Code: Select all

/**
Speak aloud some text on iOS. A function that take a string and speak it
Name: smkSpeakText
Type: function
*/
library net.anvic.skids.speechsynth

use com.livecode.foreign
use com.livecode.objc

metadata title is "Speech Synth Library"
metadata author is "Simon (Skids) Knight"
metadata version is "1.0.0"
metadata OS is "iOS"



-- bind the memory allocation handler - ok
private foreign handler ObjC_AVSpeechSynthAlloc() \
			returns optional ObjcID \
			binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechSynthesizer.+alloc"

-- bind the initialisation of new object - ok
private foreign handler ObjC_AVSpeechSynthInit(in pObj as ObjcID) \
			returns optional ObjcRetainedID \
			binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechSynthesizer.-init"



-- Now create an 'Utterance' to be passed to the AVSpeechSynthesizer
private foreign handler ObjC_AVSpeechUtteranceAlloc() \
			returns optional ObjcID \
			binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechUtterance.+alloc"

private foreign handler ObjC_AVSpeechUtteranceInitWithString(in pObj as ObjcID, in pText as objcID) \
      	returns optional ObjcRetainedID \
      	binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechUtterance.-initWithString:"

private foreign handler ObjC_AVSpeechUtteranceSetVoice(in pUtteranceObj as ObjcID, in pVoiceObject as objcID) \
      	returns optional ObjcRetainedID \
      	binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechUtterance.setVoice:"

-- Now the method to send the utterance to the AVSpeechSynthesizer

private foreign handler ObjC_SpeakUtterance(in pObj as ObjcID, in pUtterance as ObjcID) \
			returns nothing \
			binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechSynthesizer.-speakUtterance:"
--
-- return a list of voices in an array of AVSpeechSynthesisVoice objects
private foreign handler ObjC_AVSpeechSynthesisVoices() \
		returns ObjcID \
		binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechSynthesisVoice.+speechVoices"

private foreign handler Objc_NameOfVoiceNSstring (in pObj as objcID) \
			returns ObjcID  \
			binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechSynthesisVoice.name"

private foreign handler Objc_LanguageOfVoiceNSstring (in pObj as objcID) \
			returns ObjcID  \
			binds to "objc:AVFoundation>AVSpeechSynthesisVoice.language"

			/**
			Summary: Get a list of available voices
			**/
variable sVoicesList as List  -- of objcObjects that should stay available between calls

public handler smkListOfVoices() returns String
	// Note this should always be called even if LCS knows the name of a voice
	// it wants to use.
	variable tArrayOfVoices as objcObject  // array of AVSpeechSythesisVoice Objects
	variable tVoices as String
	unsafe
		put ObjC_AVSpeechSynthesisVoices() into tArrayOfVoices
		put AV_ReadVoices(tArrayOfVoices) into tVoices
	end unsafe

	return tVoices

end handler

private handler AV_ReadVoices(in pNSArrayOfVoices as objcID) returns String
	variable tVoicesList as List  -- native List LCB type
	variable tVoiceObj as objcObject -- AVSpeechSythesisVoice object
	variable tNameObj as objcObject -- NSString
	variable tLanguageObj as objcObject -- NSString
	variable tFoundVoices as String -- native string that will be returned

	if pNSArrayOfVoices is not nothing then
		put listFromNSArray(pNSArrayOfVoices) into sVoicesList
	else
		return "Empty Array Passed into AV_ReadVoices"
	end if
	-- Loop through the voice objects in the list reading the name
	repeat for each element tVoiceObj in sVoicesList
		unsafe
			if Objc_NameOfVoiceNSstring(tVoiceObj) is not nothing then
				put Objc_NameOfVoiceNSstring(tVoiceObj) into tNameObj
				put Objc_LanguageOfVoiceNSstring(tVoiceObj) into tLanguageObj
				put StringFromNSString(tLanguageObj) & "," & StringFromNSString(tNameObj) & ";" after tFoundVoices
			end if
		end unsafe
	end repeat

	-- tidy up return string
	if tFoundVoices ends with ";" then
		delete the last char of tFoundVoices
	end if

	return tFoundVoices
end handler

/**
Summary: Speak some text, specifying the voice to be used.
 smkSpeakText("hello World","Daniel")
Type: function
**/

public handler smkSpeakText(in pText as String, in pVoiceName as String) returns String
	variable tSpeechSynth as objcObject
	variable tUtterance as objcObject
	variable tTextToSpeak as objcObject

	variable tVoiceObj as objcObject

	-- call function to look up and return voice object
	put GetVoiceObjectNamed(pVoiceName) into tVoiceObj
	if tVoiceObj is nothing then
		return " error getting voice object to use"
	end if

	unsafe

		-- convert the string passed into a NSString object
		put StringToNSString(pText) into tTextToSpeak

		-- create instance of SpeechSynth
		put ObjC_AVSpeechSynthAlloc() into tSpeechSynth
		put ObjC_AVSpeechSynthInit(tSpeechSynth) into tSpeechSynth

		-- create instance of Utterance
		put ObjC_AVSpeechUtteranceAlloc() into tUtterance
		put ObjC_AVSpeechUtteranceInitWithString(tUtterance,tTextToSpeak) into tUtterance

		-- new code to set voice
		ObjC_AVSpeechUtteranceSetVoice(tUtterance, tVoiceObj)

		-- Lastly Speak the Utterance
		ObjC_SpeakUtterance(tSpeechSynth,tUtterance)

	end unsafe
	return "Complete"
end handler

private handler GetVoiceObjectNamed(in pVoiceName as String) returns objcObject
	variable tVoiceObj as ObjcObject  -- this will be returned
	variable tNameObj as ObjcObject -- An NSstring object
	variable tVoiceName as String

	-- Loop through the voice objects in the list reading the name
	repeat for each element tVoiceObj in sVoicesList
		unsafe
			if Objc_NameOfVoiceNSstring(tVoiceObj) is not nothing then
				put Objc_NameOfVoiceNSstring(tVoiceObj) into tNameObj
				put StringFromNSString(tNameObj) into tVoiceName

				if tVoiceName is pVoiceName then
					-- correct object found so stop repeating
					exit repeat
				end if
			else
				-- an error has occured
				return nothing
			end if
		end unsafe
	end repeat
	-- this will either return the correct voice or the last voice in list
	return tVoiceObj
end handler

end library
I had to use the "|" itemdelimiter because I couldn't find out how to add a TAB (sigh). Anyway, easy to parse in LCS
Trevix
OSX 14.3.1 xCode 15 LC 10 DP7 iOS 15> Android 7>

PaulDaMacMan
Posts: 616
Joined: Wed Apr 24, 2013 4:53 pm
Contact:

Re: Text-to-speech TTS for iOS

Post by PaulDaMacMan » Wed Feb 19, 2020 3:17 am

trevix wrote:
Wed Feb 19, 2020 1:04 am
I had to use the "|" itemdelimiter because I couldn't find out how to add a TAB (sigh). Anyway, easy to parse in LCS
for 'tab' you can use a token \t
like this:

Code: Select all

variable tStr as String -- LCB string
  put "\t" into tStr -- tab character
  unsafe
    put ObjC_NSArrayComponentsJoinedByString(pNSArray, StringToNSString(tStr)) into tNSString  -- <-- this is from some other LCB thing I was working on
  end unsafe
return StringFromNSString(tNSString) -- returns a tab delimited list
"\r\n" would be the equivalent of LC's CR & LF for a macOS line delimited list
My GitHub Repos: https://github.com/PaulMcClernan/
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