hmarian wrote:The same for me.
"Pkwy" is reading out "Parkway" on the client and is more consistent with road signage.
Could someone finish this test and add to the TTS Log FIle?

Thanks,
Hagay.

rcenteno_davis wrote:... Do we need to add a separate row?

I've added "PARKWY, parkwy, Parkwy, PKWAY, pkwy, Pkway, PKWY, pkwy, Pkwy, PKY, pky, Pky, PKWAYS, pkways, Pkways" to the test rig for completeness, and will update the list in a couple of days, once the map tiles update and I can listen to the results.

The list was updated yesterday with the results for most of the abbreviations and capitalization variations for:

Boro, Borough, Center, Centers, Centre, Estate, Estates, Rail Road, Ranch Road, Ranch to Market, Rural Route, State Highway, Township, Township Road.

Update: Parkway and Parkways also added to list.

The most significant change was the addition of a new column to reflect the test results for both audio files that are created by Waze.

After tweaking the text more today, here is the note that was added to the file to explain the change:

In the Text-to-Speech (TTS) Abbreviations in Waze Clients Test List for North America, GizmoGuy wrote wrote:
• Waze creates two TTS audio files for every routed road segment on the Android. One file speaks just the names contained in the segment name property. The other prefixes the segment name with the word "at". (On iOS devices, only the prefixed files have been found thus far.) It was not until late 2012 that a distinction in the TTS results between the two files was noticed. Testing of both files started on 2013-01-12, when a second result column was added. Therefore, until all items are re-tested, an entry in the Non "at" prefixed audio file column, will be either for the prefixed or the non-prefixed results if the "at" prefixed audio file column is empty.

I have not yet edited the opening post to reflect this.

Single letters to be pronounced as letters when a capitalized letter is surrounded by double quotes was the suggestion made to Waze back in October 2012.

When I have not retested all the permutations, it looks like from those who have tested the letters, N, E, S, and W, that Waze has changed functionality so that upper or lower case letters surrounded by single or double quotes will now say the letter and not the cardinal direction.

I'll amend the list once I can test more permutations.

Regarding roads named as letters, I agree that surrounding the capitalized letter with single quotes will look the best as Alan said. I have yet to retest for the various test from the list for the letters, N, E, S, and W, however multiple Wazers have indicated recently that the result are now different that what is shown in the list.

Using a period after a letter may lead to confusion, as it looks like a standard cardinal direction abbreviation, as Jason said.

However using periods with multiple letters, such as A.T.T. or N.Y.C. to get the abbreviation pronounced as individual letters should be fine, if it really is working that way universally now.

One problem is that we have found in the past that many factors affect the TTS results.

The position of the abbreviation relative to other words, punctuation around it, capitalization, and the various combinations of those factors.

When list here was created, I used a space a forward slash and a space around every abbreviation, with multiple abbreviations per test segment. We expected a forward slash to produce a pause, as Waze said it would be any easy change. Since it did not happen as soon as we hoped, the TTS results were very hard to understand without any pauses. Another editor, jenncard, was helping at the time with the project, and created a test rig of her own with each abbreviation with a comma and a space. The results were much easier to understand.

Last spring I started to use her method for testing. Since that time however there has been suspicion that the comma may even cause a change in the results. Furthermore, it may be possible that ANY other words on a segment besides the abbreviation to be tested may create a different result.

If you look at the most recent entries in the list, you may notice that several test segments have created TWO TTS audio files which are actually different from each other. (On Android, one file is created with just the words in the segment name, and another file is created with the segment name prefixed with the word "at".)

A few examples:
- The abbreviation "RR" for "Rural Route", says the letters "ar ar" in one file and "Rural Route" in the other.
- The abbreviation "Cent" for "Center", say "Cent" in one file and "Center" for the other.
- Several abbreviations for "Parkway", say the letters for one file if the abbreviation is capitalized , and say "Parkway" for the other file.
- While testing "SH-123" as am abbreviation for "State Highway 123", one file said the letters and the numbers "one hundred twenty-three", where the other file said the letters and "one two three".

And in one case were I was testing the abbreviations "boro, par, ph" for Borough, Parade, and Parish, I had TTS results that said "borough par pea-aitch", and the other file said "borough parade phone".
When "ph" was tested again by itself, the results were the letters "pea-aight" for both files.

Testing for every possibility is a bit overwhelming at this point.

To insure that we have tested as many possibilities for BOTH TTS files generated, here are the re-tests I just submitted to my test rig. (They are NOT in the list yet.)

N / n / E / e / S / s / W / w / NE / ne / NW / ne / SE / se / SW / sw
N. / n. / E. / e. / S. / s. / W. / w.
'N' / 'n' / 'E' / 'e' / 'S' / 's' / 'W' / 'w'
"N" / "n" / "E" / "e" / "S" / "s" / "W" / "w"
/N , /n , /E , /e , /S , /s , /W , /w

Please wait until the results are in for all of these before changing any segment names.

They were entered into WME 2013-02-03 05:30 UTC, so the results may not be available until Monday. I'll will try to audio test them as soon as they are incorporated into the map updates.

Regarding "Avenue S", I feel that since the word "Avenue" is not used as a suffix, and that it is used in this case more as a proper noun and not as an adjective, that it probably should remain spelled out, which would mean the name entry would be [Avenue 'S'], even though it implicitly implies that the road is an avenue.

As an example, there is a road near me called "West Course Road". I have it named in Waze as [West Course Rd] rather than [W Course Rd]. The word "West" in this case is part of the proper noun for the name of the road, and NOT a cardinal prefix adjective.

Sorry all, but I have been too busy lately to work on the list. I'll try to get the latest results posted once I have some time.

sketch wrote:

PhantomSoul wrote:Does anyone know if the common abbreviation "Twp" gets expanded to Township?

According to the spreadsheet, it does not.

One of the suggestions made to Waze last year was that all non-two letter State abbreviations be changed to two capital letters. One offender strewas Penn which said "Pennsylvania" which prevented any streets named "Penn" from being spoke correctly.

However, I have not tested any of them again since to hear what they say. Once we hear the latest on how Waze would like to proceed, the list in the spreadsheet may need to be completely retested.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

taddison1 wrote:A street near me, called "Ira E Woods" was/is being pronounced "Ira East Woods". The "E" is a middle initial, not a direction, so it needs to say "eee" instead of "East".

I looked at the spreadsheet, and it seems to suggest that adding a period after the E would cause it to say "eee", but then there's an accompanying note that says "n/a See East" which seemed contradictory.

Regardless, I recently added the the period, but last time I drove there it still said "East". Should this have worked? Do I just need to clear my tts cache and try again? If it makes a difference, I'm on IOS, not Android.

Perhaps the answer is already in this thread; I've skimmed through some of it but there are 53 pages so forgive me if I missed it

Thanks,
taddison1

The spreadsheet entries are tests to confirm or deny expected or desired results. When you see "n/a", that means that the abbreviation tested did not work as expect or desired.

As Doctorkb said, the best solution at the moment is to enclose a N, E, S, or W in single quotes to get the letter only pronounced. If it still does not work, then use a lower case letter in single quotes.

Yes 50 some pages is a lot to digest. No problem asking again.

spock7230 wrote:I've skimmed through the topic so far and have found a few entries that match the "street" vs "saint" problem with the "St" abbreviation, but haven't seen a clear answer yet on a best practice.

As part of my routing directions the other day, I was told to turn onto "Mechanic Saint Bypass," which has the street name label of "Mechanic St Byp" Is the best practice to spell out "St" as "Street" in the case where "street" isn't the last word in the street name? (Permalink) Otherwise, "St" is spoken "street" so far for me.

Thanks.

Eventually we may actually get "St." to be "Saint" and "St" to be "Street" regardless of their position in the name. But until we do, the best answer as we have said before, deserves repeating, "when in doubt, spell it out!"