Voice Release v2.4

Voice is about to update to a new release in a few minutes.

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Dear friends of Voice,

Voice v2.4 has just been released with some new features and some pronunciation fixes.

Our Pali, English and German Voices have learned not to pronounce punctuation like dashes or quote marks. Also, the German voices have had some Pali lessons and are now able to pronounce Pali proper names like “Jeta” or “Anāthapiṇḍika” correctly. If you find more pronunciation quirks, please let us know!

Apart from that we have started taking measures to reduce the operating costs of Voice. We have established a different system for storing the sound files that have been generated from the TTS service we use so that for each sound file we only have to pay once. Afterwards it can always be called from the new S3 store which we called “SayAgain”: It keeps words that are worth repeating.

The Voice search box has changed its look a little. Voice did already offer the option to click “Inspire Me” in order to find helpful search terms for Sutta study. Now you only have to click into the search box and start typing, and you will be shown suggestions to search for.

Click into the search box and start typing:

Screenshot from 2020-09-25 15-54-00

Screenshot from 2020-09-25 15-54-19

Screenshot from 2020-09-25 15-54-36

Screenshot from 2020-09-25 15-54-55

This feature is rather for the visually oriented users; we’ll add an option to the settings to go back to the simpler search box since this one is a bit less accessible for those with weak vision.

Please let us know how you like this new feature!

By implementing both SayAgain and the search box type ahead function we are also opening doors to move into new directions. The steps we have been taking here will allow breaking up different elements of Voice’s functionality and apply them, not only in Voice, but anywhere where they can be useful. We are thinking of integrating them ourselves into different applications in the future. These may include

  • an offline use facility.
  • a new sort of search interface for personal Sutta study, which we like to call “Dhamma wings”—use wings to fly through the early texts, guided by your own intuition and study interest.

But of course these Voice functionality elements are also available for anyone else to use.

In order to give our ideas about these things a clearer shape it would be very valuable to hear your feedback, especially on the new search box type ahead function.

See here for all issues of the release.

Your feedback and questions about Voice are always welcome in this thread.

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Thank Anagarika for all your hard work this release. You’ve done an amazing job correcting German pronunciation for Hans, Marlene and Vicki narrators and have added a LOT of new German translations. :tada: :pray:

And you’ve also kept the Github issues all quite neatly organized for us to see what to do next. :heart_eyes_cat:

:pray:

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Ohh … :blush: thanks for your kind words, @karl_lew!

It has been great fun this time to work with you through unclear shapes of new ideas first and gradually see things emerge more clearly, finally becoming amazing and (hopefully) most useful new features!

:pray:

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Some of you may experience error 521 with the new Voice release:

SOLUTION: Simply close the browser page/tab and open a new window for voice.suttacentral.net

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It may even suffice to just reload the page.

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How wonderful, thank you very much. Big fan of SC Voice, it is an excellent resource.

Please keep up the great work :anjal:

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Voice is currently failing with server code 500.

We are aware of the issue and will be working on it as a priority. Thank you for your patience and stay tuned here for updates.

:cry:

We’ve reached out to @blake for assistance on dealing with the Internal Server Error reported for https://suttacentral.net/api/suttaplex/sn42.11

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Voice is back working, thanks to @HongDa! :pray:

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Dear friends, bad news:

Voice is currently down and doesn’t play a sutta for you. We are aware of the problem and have to investigate …

Voice is playing, although a bit slow … for some reason all caches have been cleared. By using Voice you will help fill them again! :pray:

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Voice should be back to normal actually. If you encounter any problems, please let us know.

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