chinese-words-separator
commented
1 year ago Supposedly, automatically playing sound on hover should work on Kiwi, it is using Chrome TTS API. Using Chrome TTS API is the only way to automatically play sound on hover. In fact, about a year ago, playing sound on hover was working on Kiwi. But it looks like Kiwi now denies Chrome TTS API access, see screenshot below
console.log('tts', Boolean(chrome.tts));
Even though the the .tts object is present on chrome object, Kiwi denies access to it
SpeechSynthesis API is even more restrictive, it allows access to the API through direct user interaction (e.g., click) only; however, hover is not a direct user interaction, so we cannot use SpeechSynthesis API to automatically play sound on hover, be it desktop or mobile. SpeechSynthesis API won’t work when it is hooked on hover event
Though you are tapping on screen to show CWS’s dictionary, it is hooked on mouseover and mouseenter (which are hover events). CWS on Kiwi uses the same codebase of CWS on Chrome, there is no special code on CWS to activate dictionary based on tap, stylus, and whatnot
However, even if we make a special hover code for stylus or other pointing device, but since Kiwi now denies Chrome TTS API, we won’t be able to play a sound with Chrome TTS API on Kiwi when a stylus is hovered
Having said that, on latest CWS (version 8.24.84.1091). You can now tap on pinyin(or zhuyin) on the dictionary to manually play back the sound. Caveat, though accurate most of the time, it is not playing back the sound of the pinyin directly, some words have multiple readings (e.g., 的, pronounced either of the following: de, dé, dí, dì, dī), it only plays back the sound of de (the most common reading of 的), even if you click dé, dí, dì, dī, those will still be played as de
Interestingly enough, accurate reading of pinyin works on Apple platform only, i.e., Safari on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and even on Chrome on Mac; de, dé, dí, dì, dī are all played back exactly how it is written phonetically. I tested Chrome on Windows, it cannot play back the sound of the pinyin directly, no sound is coming out. So I made a detection on CWS that if it is running on non-Apple platform, the SpeechSynthesis API should read the hanzi character instead of the pinyin, at least there is a fallback sound that can be played. So just like its Kiwi cousin, Chrome on Windows can only play back the most common reading of a hanzi character; so in case of 的, its sound is played back as de only, so even if you clicked on dé, dí, dì, dī on non-Apple platform, it will still be played back as de. I digress
If you still want to automatically play back the sound whenever the dictionary is shown on Kiwi, you can use Bing’s read aloud functionality. To use Bing, click the Bing icon (encircled) as shown below:
And then check the automatic read aloud:
Then go back to the page you are reading. Now every time the dictionary is shown, the sound will be automatically played courtesy of Bing
I hazard a guess that stylus on Windows tablets or Chromebook tablets will work as hover/mouseover, but that will incur buying another device
srghma
Solution: add play sound on first and subsequent clicks
Solution: handle stylus hover