Speech Plugin 2.4

[jsmorley]

For now mine is same as kyriakos876's posted above (David and Zira). But yet I don't have installed nor Romanian, nor Hungarian (nor any other) language pack.
If you know, where can I download those language packs (just not to look for them over all microsoft.com)?

No, you simply go into Settings, Time & Language, Language in Windows.

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Windows will take care of it all for you. That is how I added German.

[jsmorley]

One thing I would note:

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Only if a language has that little "Text-to-Speech" indicator does it install any "voices" in windows.

I think both Romanian and Hungarian do... As you can see, for instance Icelandic does not.

[balala]

I think both Romanian and Hungarian do... As you can see, for instance Icelandic does not.

Ok, but something doesn't work well.
Just for tryout I installed Hungarian. It is installed:

hun.png

If I click Preview voice (Beszédhang meghalgatása in the above pic), Windows speaks Hungarian. It is a well speaking, entirely good and understandable Hungarian speech. However in your skin still only the David and Zira are shown:

Speech.png

Immediately will try Romanian too. Let's see how will it work.

[jsmorley]

However, having said that, I installed the Romanian language pack and I'm not getting any additional voices. No idea. It may need both the "Text-to-Speech" icon the little "microphone" for "Speech Recognition", on the language.

[jsmorley]

Ok, but something doesn't work well.
Just for tryout I installed Hungarian. It is installed:
hun.png
If I click Preview voice (Beszédhang meghalgatása in the above pic), Windows speaks Hungarian. It is a well speaking, entirely good and understandable Hungarian speech. However in your skin still only the David and Zira are shown:
Speech.png
Immediately will try Romanian too. Let's see how will it work.

That "Speech Recognition" functionality in Windows is entirely different than the "Text-to-Speech" functionality. You get to that in Control Panel at:

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Ease of Access Center\Use the computer without a display
Then click on "Set up Text to Speech".

[jsmorley]

The Text-to-Speech stuff in Windows seems slightly crippled to me. Tons of voices are available in "Speech Recognition" and "Narrator" in Windows settings, but few of them make their way over to the Text-to-Speech options.

Ah well... Microsoft...

[balala]

However, having said that, I installed the Romanian language pack and I'm not getting any additional voices. No idea. It may need both the "Text-to-Speech" icon the little "microphone" for "Speech Recognition", on the language.

No, no, I just got Andrei, who speaks Romanian:

rom.png

And he indeed does.
But the skin still has just David and Zira. And same two are there in the Set up Text to Speech window, too:

Speech.png

[jsmorley]

The languages in system.speech.synthesizer() are a bit of a mess. That is the routine used in the "Ease of Access / Text-to-Speech" settings in Control Panel, but apparently has nothing to do with any other speech capabilities in Windows, like "Narrator".

What I have found is that only some of the language packs for Windows 10, and there are boatloads, have voices supported by system.speech.synthesizer(), although they may have ones supported by Narrator. It seems that mostly the "older" and "popular" languages are supported, like English-US, English-UK, German, French, Spanish, etc.

Also, what I have found is that getting them working is a bit tricky.

What you have to do is:

1) Go to Settings / Time & Language / Language and click "+ Add a language"

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2) Then on the next dialog that pops up, deselect "Install language pack and set as my Windows display language".
You want the language pack, but presumably you don't want that to be your new default language.
Then click on "Install".

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3) Then click on the new language pack in the list and select "Options"

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4) Then on the next dialog that pops up, DO select "Download" for the Language pack, and be sure everything in the list finishes downloading.
It will take a couple of minutes.

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5) Ok. Get out of Setting....
Restart your computer. Don't shut down, RESTART.
It will install the new language pack stuff during the restart. You will see it saying "Working on Windows" or some such. This might take 10 minutes.

6) Wait for Windows to come back up. Now do nothing. Sit still for about 5-10 minutes. It does some completion of the installation after it restarts, behind the scenes. Give it time.

7) Now restart again.. I know...

8) With any luck, your brand-spanking new voice will be there. This worked for me, but as I said, only for the common, popular languages I tried. I tried Romanian, and no amount of restarting or waiting or begging or cursing would get that voice to be supported.

5.jpg

P.S. If you decide to "remove" a language pack, as I did with German, (auf wiedersehen Hedda!) you need to do all the same restarting and waiting and restarting and such, or the voice you removed will still be listed as available, but actually won't work. It will in fact just crash Rainmeter.

[JPapavas]

Windows 10 Language ID codes
Language Name - Language ID
English (default) 0409
French 040c
Spanish 0c0a
Italian 0410
Swedish 041D
Dutch 0413
Brazilian 0416
Finnish 040b
Norwegian 0414
Danish 0406
Hungarian 040e
Polish 0415
Russian 0419
Czech 0405
Greek 0408
Portuguese 0816
Turkish 041f
Japanese 0411
Korean 0412
German 0407
Chinese (Simplified) 0804
Chinese (Traditional) 0404
Arabic 0401
Hebrew 040d

-For Windows 10-
Open command prompt and type: dism /online /get-intl

example:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>dism /online /get-intl

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.17134.1

Image Version: 10.0.17134.556

Reporting online international settings.

Default system UI language : el-GR
The UI language fallback is : en-US
System locale : el-GR
Default time zone : GTB Standard Time
Active keyboard(s) : 0409:00000409, 0408:00000408
Keyboard layered driver : PC/AT Enhanced Keyboard (101/102-Key)

Installed language(s): el-GR
Type : Partially localized language, MUI type.
Fallback Languages en-US

The operation completed successfully.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

(0409 & 0408 are the language keyboard choices)

[jsmorley]

Interesting. As far as I can tell, the voices that are supported on your system for system.speech.synthesizer() will be listed in the registry in:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech\Voices

Which is all well and good, but I see no way to alter what is in there, certainly not how to safely hack in another voice that is otherwise installed on your system to support Narrator and such.