Test of Text-to-Speech (TTS) Abbreviations in Waze Clients

[GizmoGuy411]

All suggestions from this forum (except for Jenn's last ones) are added to the list as of this post. Thanks everyone.

The letters of the alphabet were also added as uppercase letters and as uppercase capital letters in quotes. Additionally, the letters , "N", "E", "S", and "W" were also added with all combinations of upper and lower case, with single and double and with and without trailing periods.

I will add all the above to the sandbox test rig as soon I as get a chance.

As Jenn suggested (thanks Jenn), all the slashes have been removed in the rig and replaced with commas, so that after the next map updates, it should be easier to understand the TTS output. Currently it is a very slow process.

The list now includes results for the initially submitted abbreviations from "A" through "H".

In my above post, viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15178&p=144296#p144296 i've updated the bottom "side note" to include another playback trick to keep the pitch understandable.

[jenncard]

I am really the only one dealing with "one half" Rd, and the like?

[CBenson]

Yep, no problems with fractions here.

[R4CLucky14]

After reading this thread for the first time, I really like the notion of a separate TTS field. Would solve alot of the issues with overlapping abbreviations.

[jenncard]

Yep, no problems with fractions here.

Poop. Saw your post and thought someone had a solution , then looked at the permalink...

I need to be able to address, for example, "J three-eighths Rd" or "Twenty-nine and one-quarter Rd"

[jenncard]

Gizmo,
Looking at the spreadsheet, a few questions... particularly for those of us who might want to play along and help the effort.

* If the "Date added to WME" is null, can you confirm that none of them have been added yet?
* Have all the "1" values been added and we are just waiting for the laborious process of you testing them?

Propose adding an "Editor" column, in case others want to join in, and maybe something to indicate "non-standard but editor requested"?

J

PS I've set up my little test for a few possible variations to get Colorado, my fractional desires, as well as some different "special" cases...

[GizmoGuy411]

Gizmo,
Looking at the spreadsheet, a few questions... particularly for those of us who might want to play along and help the effort.

* If the "Date added to WME" is null, can you confirm that none of them have been added yet?
* Have all the "1" values been added and we are just waiting for the laborious process of you testing them?

Propose adding an "Editor" column, in case others want to join in, and maybe something to indicate "non-standard but editor requested"?

J

PS I've set up my little test for a few possible variations to get Colorado, my fractional desires, as well as some different "special" cases...

Yes to both questions. I intended to use a key instead of an actual date for when an abbreviation was added to WME, however I may just scrap it and use a date anyway

I needed to add the various dates so I could track where I was in the process, since it involves multiple steps.

So you can see with all the nulls that I have a lot to test yet.

As far adding an "Editor" column, i'm not sure of your intended purpose, as I have already added suggestions as they come in. As far as your special fractional streets go, as long as you have a rig set up, just let me know the results of each and I'll add them to the list.

Once we have a decent list, I'll add it to the Wiki.

[GizmoGuy411]

For those who would like to hear Samatha or Tom (plus others) convert text to speech, here is link to Nuance's interactive demo of their "Vocalizer for Netrork 5" product. Note that although the database is similar, it is not customized with their automotive product, or with Waze customizations.

Interactive TTS Demo: http://www.nuance.com/vocalizer5/flash/index.html

The sister product that Waze appears to use, is Nuance's "Vocalizer for Automotive" (no demo found), that has a preconfigured database customized for automotive use, and includes their Vocalizer Studio, which allows for a customization like several people in the various threads here about TTS have talked about; "it also allows customized text processing and the creation of user dictionaries for exception pronunciations."

The Nuance Language Portfolio for their Automotive Services, for the US English in the Americas, shows Samantha and Tom which Waze uses and Lisa who is not available in Waze. Check it out for other voices.

Edited 2012-05-09 to include additional relevant links to Nuance.

[banished]

Two things that I can confirm:
1) comma does add pause, so perhaps change your sandbox from / separators to , to make it easier?
2) the space before and after the / are critical! Recently encountered a "Blah blah Ave/ Irrelevant St" named exit and the "Ave" was pronounced "ayve", NOT expanded out to "avenue"

Argh! I've been saying this (about the commas) until I've come down with carpal-tunnel syndrome. Never-the-less, Waze said they'll put in a ticket to have the slash (with spaces on both sides) to make TTS treat it as a comma, but who knows when that will happen?

Meanwhile, though there was agreement (at the Meetup) to eliminate "US Hwy xx" in favor of "US-xx", there's still hesitancy to adopt it until Waze makes the shields work for that naming convention…which is the way I feel about the commas. I just want to do the right thing, but there still doesn't seem to be any consensus.

[CBenson]

Whats does "n/a" in the confirmed results column mean?