Read Text 0.8.82
==================
All
---
- Updated lexicons.
- When using `localhost` or local network speech tools, the extension strips
non-printing characters to increase efficiency and to avoid unexpected
vocalizations with some neural voice models.
Windows
-------
### Piper + VLC Client
[Piper][1] is a fast, local neural text-to-speech system that sounds great.
[VLC][2] is a free cross platform streaming media player.
- Piper is a neural text-to-speech system that you can install on computers with
compatible processors. You can choose from many [languages and voice models][3].
- When using a compatible release in Windows, the Piper text-to-speech python client
now plays the selected text aloud without showing a command line window or a VLC
player window by default. It now works the same as a Posix operating system does.
- You can show python information in a command line window in Windows using
`--update False` or `--update True` in the command line options field of the main
extension dialog.
- You can make a VLC player window visible by including a non-zero value while using the
`--player` option. For example, you could change `--player 0` to `--player 7` in the
command line options field to enable a graphical sound display.
Linux
-----
### Platforms
- Some Linux platforms use specific library directories for different processor architectures.
The extension now checks the `gstreamer` directories for [officially supported architectures][4]
using Debian 12 naming conventions.
### spaCy Library
[spaCy][5] is a library for advanced Natural Language Processing in Python and Cython.
- On supported platforms, spaCy can intelligently divide long text strings into sentences.
This helps online speech synthesis platforms return results faster.
- The extension uses an improved fallback method to divide long text strings into
sentences if `spacy` does not work. See
<https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/issues/13550>.
[1]: https://github.com/jimholgate/readtextextension/blob/master/gists/setup_...
[2]: https://www.videolan.org/vlc
[3]: https://rhasspy.github.io/piper-samples/
[4]: https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/gstreamer1.0-tools
[5]: https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/