TTS: Speech rate in SpeechOptions and more

[ac-lap]

Description

The current support for TTS in MAUI seems very basic. I have following requests -

1. Control speech rate/speed
   SpeechOptions does not contain any property to control speech rate, and this should be a P0 scenario to be supported. Any app which has TTS functionality, cannot offer it without speech rate control.
   Is there any workaround for Android for this?

2. Callback/Event to track which utterance has been completed
   Currently SpeakAsync() is fire and forget, there should be some mechanism to pass Id and get callback once the utterance is complete, so that program can track the progress. There are some ways to do it outside from the program but it could be error prone, but out of the box would me preferred and better.

3. Support for SSML?

Public API Changes

SpeechOptions

ITextToSpeech.SpeakAsync

Intended Use-Case

I have an epub book reader app on UWP, and I am trying to port it to Android. The app offers TTS support, and most users prefer to set the speech rate as per the preference. The current lack of speech control in MAUI appears to be a blocker.

Any short-term workaround available for Android would help me unblock.

[ghost]

We've added this issue to our backlog, and we will work to address it as time and resources allow. If you have any additional information or questions about this issue, please leave a comment. For additional info about issue management, please read our Triage Process.

[jfversluis]

SpeechOptions does not contain any property to control speech rate, and this should be a P0 scenario to be supported.

While this definitely is a P0 scenario for your app, this might not be true for other users and thus it's hard for us to justify working on this at this time. There is a couple of things you can do to unblock yourself:

• Investigate the code for TTS and see if you can extend our code for your needs
• If that's not possible you can copy the code we have into your own project and extend if from there with what you need
• If it is possible, you could consider opening a PR with your changes so that we can all benefit from that
• Find a third-party alternative

Good luck!

[tiaanv]

+1 for this. I will take a look if I can implement it, and then do a PR.

[whann0205]

I really would also like to see that kind of feature.
At the moment if short words in german are spoken
such as "zählen" it is nearly impossible to understand it.
Lowering the rate might solve that one