Deemphasizing punctuation speech for the Mac speech server

[Devin Prater <r.d.t.prater@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all. After using the Mac for a little while, with Emacspeak, I noticed that, coming from using Voxin on Linux, the Mac speech was a bit less expressive when speaking punctuation. I know, the Mac speech system, MacinTalk, isn’t as controllable as Voxin is, but it can still do things that, as far as I know, eSpeak cannot. One of these things is emphasis, or removing emphasis. This is how VoiceOver makes reading with all punctuation feel more natural. When speaking, people don’t put as much emphasis on punctuation, when dictating, as on regular text. T. V. Raman made Voxin do this, so I thought I’d do this for the Mac server. I’ve been using it this way for a while now, and like it. I’m sure, though, that the original developers of the server could do far more with this than I have. So, here’s how to do it:

In the servers directory of Emacspeak, find the Mac file. In this buffer, find the punctuation mappings, and follow this example for all punctuation, and maybe add one for the question mark if you’re brave enough, which I wasn’t.

                 ‘.':'[[emph -]]dot[[emph +]]',

Notice the new tags around the word “dot”. [[emph -]] tells MacinTalk to emphasize less than normal the following text. Then, we have to set things back to normal after emphasizing less with [[emph +]]. Please do not copy the line above directly, as the first apostrophe has been changed to a single quote by macOS. I’m not sure if this list supports attachments, so I won’t attach my file until I’m sure.

For the developers of the server, information on how to fine-tune control of the MacinTalk synthesizer is at:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/SpeechSynthesisProgrammingGuide/FineTuning/FineTuning.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40004365-CH5-SW10

Hopefully this results in betterment of Emacspeak’s operation and speech within the macOS environment. Note that I am not a programmer. I’m just a user that loves the aural highlighting and voice-locking functions of Emacspeak, and the sound icons, as well as the detail of accessibility provided by macOS.

Even though Emacs frustrates me sometimes, with its limited browser and do-it-yourself mentality, when things work, they work spectacularly, like Twittering-mode, now the only free, current, and accessible way of accessing Twitter on the Mac without drudging through the web app, Python-mode, for when I try to “learn Python the hard way,” and even modes that aren’t speech-enabled, like Nov-mode for reading Epub files. Emacs, and Emacspeak, are quickly becoming huge parts of what I use the Mac for, and I hope that this small contribution helps make things better and Emacspeak’s speak even more beautiful for those like me who aren’t programmers, but who appreciate beautiful audio and formatted speech.