Windows Mudlet missing voices that OS has

[Kebap]

Brief summary of issue / Description of requested feature:

Some voices which are available in OS are not available in Mudlet. This is a Qt bug.

Steps to reproduce the issue / Reasons for adding feature:

Compare list of voices visible in Windows' voice settings vs. Mudlet's ttsGetVoices() output:

1. Example Player A
   Windows: 5 voices
   Mudlet: 2 voices

2. Example Player B
   Windows: 2 voices
   Mudlet: 1 voice

3. Example Player C
   Windows: 3 voices
   Mudlet: 1 voice

Error output / Expected result of feature

Mudlet should receive all available voices from OS through Qt framework

Extra information, such as Mudlet version, operating system and ideas for how to solve / implement:

Mudlet 4.8
Win 10
Not sure if other OS are affected as well

[mwarzec]

Player A
Win 10 Pro
ver 1903
compilation 18362.778

[vadi2]

I just clarified the title of the issue a bit. Looking into the differences now.

[Kebap]

Did you check Linux and MacOS are not affected by this then?

[vadi2]

macOS lists all voices, even has an extra one. Linux does not have sound output yet.

[vadi2]

This is a Qt issue - see the sample demo app is also affected:

I've reported it to them over here.

[vadi2]

I wonder what the "Desktop" in the voice name means. Anyone have an explanation from Windows on this?

[SlySven]

Nope - but I suspect the Desktop variant makes the narrator work on the whole desktop and not just applications (c.f. Garmin Sat. Navs - which often have two voices in each gender and locale - one of which reads the street names out and one which does not!)

[vadi2]

Here's what Qt had to say:

Triager here. My best guess is that this is because Qt Speech currently only currently supports one of the Speech API's on Windows: SAPI5. Newer language pack voices instead only support WinRT APIs.

[Kebap]

This was actually noted way back in 2018 see point 5 here: #1881

ttsGetVoices - I have 2 voices installed and can change via OS. But GetVoices only ever lists the selected one, not the other

To which @jgh713 duly noted:

This is something to do with the QTSpeech interface. Changing your locale may make the other show, but there are certain voices I tried to install it just refused to recognize, no matter the locale set.

[vadi2]

Should this still be a bug? It's not a feature that Qt supports, so not really sure if that qualifies as a bug for us - more like a wishlist to have.

[Kebap]

Tagged as upstream as well, because we can't fix here.

[SlySven]

They have fixed it upstream apparently - but for Qt 6.4+ so will still be an issue for us as we use Qt 5.14 or Qt 5.15 on Windows.

[vadi2]

Yeah... more and more need to get onto Qt6 proper.