Bug(?) Some issues with ReadAloud

Logos,

I have a list of issues with Read Aloud in Logos 5.2a, the issue is the same for Logos for Mac an Windows (except the last point below). I will use Lexham Bible Guide Genesis 12-50, as this resource is Logos owned.

Narrator continues reading after the End of Page and I would expect Logos to turn the page so that I can follow the reading. Logos does not turn to the Next Page, in the case of a long paragraph that crosses to next page. The page will only turn when it comes to a point where the “Golden Star” flashes (eg. the beginning of a new Paragraph, header, bullet points, citation, etc).
When reading a Title in the resource, it is always broken into 2 parts. the First word of the Title, followed by an unnatural "Pause" and a Golden Star, followed by the reading the rest of the Title.
When you Pause the Reading anywhere in resource (like somewhere near the end of the page), when you UnPause / Play I would expect it to continue where I Paused. Instead, Logos blindly read from the First Word of the Page all over again. Same behavior as you use CMD+R to stop/pause and CMD+R to start/replay from the first word of the page (Ctrl+R for Windows).
When reading unnumbered bullet points, it always read “comma” as a prefix before reading the bullet point. (This is not an issue with Logos for Windows - only issue with Logos for Mac)

Hoping to see improvement in this useful ReadAloud function in Logos 5

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LimJK

Hi,

I noticed that when Logos 5 starts ReadAloud, it disable the Pause/Play Control from both the Keyboard as well as Ear Phone Control.

PS: I noticed that Volume Control (up and down) works from keyboard or Ear Phone Control ... only Pause/Play not working.

Thomas Ball

Narrator continues reading after the End of Page and I would expect Logos to turn the page so that I can follow the reading. Logos does not turn to the Next Page, in the case of a long paragraph that crosses to next page. The page will only turn when it comes to a point where the “Golden Star” flashes (eg. the beginning of a new Paragraph, header, bullet points, citation, etc).

You use the word "page" a lot in your post. This resource doesn't have "pages" per se, but I was able to replicate the behavior you describe her when in reading view mode. I'll write up a case for this.

When reading a Title in the resource, it is always broken into 2 parts. the First word of the Title, followed by an unnatural "Pause" and a Golden Star, followed by the reading the rest of the Title.

I wasn't able to replicate this. I listened to the title "God Appears to Abraham at Mamre" in this resource and it read as I would expect it to. It read the title, then a pause and the citation, and finally one more Pause and the word "Overview." This is all as I would expect.

When you Pause the Reading anywhere in resource (like somewhere near the end of the page), when you UnPause / Play I would expect it to continue where I Paused. Instead, Logos blindly read from the First Word of the Page all over again. Same behavior as you use CMD+R to stop/pause and CMD+R to start/replay from the first word of the page (Ctrl+R for Windows).

I'm pretty sure it's always done this when the reader wasn't a human reading. Where the reading starts is a result of how the resource is tagged I believe, but I can ask about it to make sure.

When reading unnumbered bullet points, it always read “comma” as a prefix before reading the bullet point. (This is not an issue with Logos for Windows - only issue with Logos for Mac)

I was unable to replicate this in the section covering Genesis 19:1-38

Thomas Ball

Hi,

I noticed that when Logos 5 starts ReadAloud, it disable the Pause/Play Control from both the Keyboard as well as Ear Phone Control.

PS: I noticed that Volume Control (up and down) works from keyboard or Ear Phone Control ... only Pause/Play not working.

I can replicate this, but I'm unconvinced it is not unexpected behavior. The read aloud isn't the same as music or a movie, but I'll confirm this is or isn't.

Jacques

Pause, Go back 30 seconds (adjustable in preferences), Speed up speech... all of these kinds of controls would be such a huge welcome!!

LimJK

Narrator continues reading after the End of Page and I would expect Logos to turn the page so that I can follow the reading. Logos does not turn to the Next Page, in the case of a long paragraph that crosses to next page. The page will only turn when it comes to a point where the “Golden Star” flashes (eg. the beginning of a new Paragraph, header, bullet points, citation, etc).

You use the word "page" a lot in your post. This resource doesn't have "pages" per se, but I was able to replicate the behavior you describe her when in reading view mode. I'll write up a case for this.

Tommy,

Sorry, I was not clear with the term "Page". I did not mean Page as per "Page" tagged by logos in the most resources; I used the word "Page" in the ordinary sense of the word when I come to the end of the text I can view on the screen.

The issue exist not only in "reading view" which you can replicate (Thank you), it also happened on an ordinary "panel" displaying the resource as follows:

LimJK

Narrator continues reading after the End of Page and I would expect Logos to turn the page so that I can follow the reading. Logos does not turn to the Next Page, in the case of a long paragraph that crosses to next page. The page will only turn when it comes to a point where the “Golden Star” flashes (eg. the beginning of a new Paragraph, header, bullet points, citation, etc).

You use the word "page" a lot in your post. This resource doesn't have "pages" per se, but I was able to replicate the behavior you describe her when in reading view mode. I'll write up a case for this.

Tommy,

Sorry, I was not clear with the term "Page". I did not mean Page as per "Page" tagged by logos in most of the resources; I used the word "Page" in the ordinary sense of the word when I come to the end of the text I can view on the screen.

The issue exist not only in "reading view" which you can replicate (Thank you), it also happened on an ordinary "panel" displaying the resource as follows:

LimJK

When reading a Title in the resource, it is always broken into 2 parts. the First word of the Title, followed by an unnatural "Pause" and a Golden Star, followed by the reading the rest of the Title.

Tommy,

I guess the reason you cannot replicate the issue, is probably because you accidentally picked the only 2 scenarios that I know it works properly [:)]

May be your title appears as the first line of text on the Page (Oops ... I mean, First line of text in the Panel displaying the resource on the screen). Logos would read the whole title in one breath ... showing one golden star, as we all expected. or
Your Title has only one word, like in your case "Overview"

Let me walk you through step by step [:)] hopefully you can replicate the issue.

Let us use the Resource - Lexham Bible Guide: Genesis 11-50
Some how navigate the resource so that the title such as "Place within the Canon" is not on the first line of text (see screen shot)
See the first star on the first screen shot, that is when narrator reads "Place"
The second screen shot shows the Second star and that is when narrator reads "within the Canon"
Repeat the above exercise on longer titles ... look for those titles where the first 2 words has to be read together ... to see more obvious effect.

PS:

I noticed that in Logos 5.2a SR1 ... the pause in-between reading the title seems more acceptable (?)
It is quite challenging for me to replicate, because Logos always start reading from the top of the page - just to rub it in [:)]

Thomas Ball

followed by an unnatural "Pause" and a Golden Star, followed by the reading the rest of the Title.

I had been listening to the narrator at a fast pace to speed up the process. When I slowed it down to normal speed (1x) There was slight hesitation between "Place" and "Within the Canon." There is also the slightest of variations between reading the start of the title as the top line, and reading first the reference on the previous line, and then the title of the next section. It looks like the hesitation is somehow due to the shift from one tag to another. I'll write up something for this.

Thomas Ball

The issue exist not only in "reading view" which you can replicate (Thank you), it also happened on an ordinary "panel" displaying the resource as follows:

I'm unable to replicate this behavior when the resource is set up in normal viewing mode. I started the reading with the title of "The Toledoth Pattern" and when the reading hit the second paragraph in the section at the word "Waltke" the page automatically moved up with a few lines before the word "Waltke" viewed. I presume it did this because the start hits that particular word because I think it is a milestone of some sort.

Can you provide a screenshot of the resource in not reading view so I can configure my resource panel the same way? There might be a a large gap between milestones which, depending on where the text ends at the bottom of the panel and where the next milestone is, may cause the behavior you describe.

Thomas Ball

When you Pause the Reading anywhere in resource (like somewhere near the end of the page), when you UnPause / Play I would expect it to continue where I Paused. Instead, Logos blindly read from the First Word of the Page all over again. Same behavior as you use CMD+R to stop/pause and CMD+R to start/replay from the first word of the page (Ctrl+R for Windows).

Playing with this further, and this seems to be consistent across platforms, the reader is reading first the top line viewed on the page regardless of where the voice last was.

Dylan Rondeau

When reading unnumbered bullet points, it always read “comma” as a prefix before reading the bullet point. (This is not an issue with Logos for Windows - only issue with Logos for Mac)

This issue is only reproducible with certain downloaded System Voice narrator choices, and Tom is one of them. I couldn't reproduce it with any of the "default" narrators, so as a workaround for now I'd recommend the "Alex" system voice, which avoids the "commas" and sounds pleasant enough. [:)]

I've made a case for a developer to look into why some voices stumble on the visual cues. The case brings up the "pause" in title sections as well, though I don't have a workaround for that, even with "Alex". If it gets fixed as well I'll mention it in the follow-up post. [:)]

LimJK

When reading unnumbered bullet points, it always read “comma” as a prefix before reading the bullet point. (This is not an issue with Logos for Windows - only issue with Logos for Mac)

Dylan,[:)]

Thank you for making the case ... hopefully, the visual cues ... can help the developer hunt down the bug.

By the way all the newer and more realistic voices (from Nuance ... which forms the bulk of all the speech-to-text voices in OS X) that comes FREE with OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion(?) display the same problem. Alex is not one of the desired voice, the pause is still there as you can see the golden star visual cue, just that Alex ignore it. Thank you.

Saay

The ReadAloud feature is woefully misunderstood by Logos. It seems to have been communicated well enough here! Someone raised the question in a What's New in Logos webinar earlier today (and in previous webinars) but the response from Logos suggests they are at the mercy of the operating systems. I assure you, it is this is not an OS issue. LimJK on April 2014 (first post, 10 years ago!) explained many of the issues quite well.
I will add these notes: (1) ReadAloud doesn't scroll to the next sentence. It tries to go paragraph by paragraph and doesn't always do so -- it should display on screen where it is reading. If I'm trying to follow along while it's "reading" it could be reading on the next page for a few minutes before the screen updates to where it's reading at some arbitrary time. I need to be able to follow along. (2) 1.4x is probably too fast for most and 2x is just ridiculous -- unusable. There needs to be a 1.2x before the 1.4x. (3) Too often, if I pause (by clicking on the Pause button) when I restart by pressing Play, ReadAloud will start reading from the top of the page, not from where I left off. (4) It would be nice to highlight or underline the text being read, but it isn't absolutely necessary compared to the first three points. For someone with blurred vision, ReadAloud is essential!

Saay

Hope this won't be ignored. And yes, it would be nice if I could go back 15 seconds and/or to start from where I last clicked my mouse.