Hi, I wanted to know if there are external or internal alternatives to the Snap! TTC library (for speech synthesis).
There are libraries made by @toontalk
https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/
But I'm not sure if they still work.
While I stopped enhancing the library I have been responding and fixing bug reports (one in the last 2 years). I just tested the speech demo (both synthesis and recognition) and it worked fine: Snap! Build Your Own Blocks
I think a hood question is, why can you not use the existing one? What are you looking for?
There are several small differences. Regarding speech recognition the eCraft2Learn library has more functionality. You can pass in a function that will receive partial results as someone is speaking. And there is error handling (which comes up if access to the microphone isn't granted or the browser doesn't support speech recognition (e.g. FireFox)).
The new library is simpler, which is good.
I was asking the OP. I do understand how ecraft2learn has more functionality, I was wondering why the regular library isn't satisfactory for them,
because I use Google Chrome as my browser and the voice that comes to me (in Italian) seems old or in any case not up to date. For this reason I wanted to understand if there was an alternative or since the voice comes from Chrome I wanted to know if there is the possibility of changing the Browser voice through an extension and if so I also wanted to know how to do it.
I believe the browser uses your operating system's text-to-speech engine—when I change the voice in my system settings, it also changes in Chrome. Plus, if I click on the speech block and then close the browser, it keeps speaking even after Chrome is closed.
The eCraft2Learn library has a 'get voices names' block. Note that most of the voices are from Google and only a few from the operating system.
Also note that it will speak numbers in the language of the voice but it won't translate. But it does often speak with an accent.
Regarding stopping speech - I guess there should be a block for that.