How do you change the speech rate in Windows Phone 8? I want to do something like this:
SpeechSynthesizer synth = new SpeechSynthesizer();
synth.Rate = -2;
However, there isn't a Rate property on SpeechSynthesizer like there is in .NET 4.5.
As you've noticed the TTS classes on WP8 do not support changing pitch, speed, emphasis, breaks or any other pronunciation related properties when using text-to-speech on strings.
If you want to have fine-grained control of speech in your app you should use TTS with SSML instead of plain strings. See a WP8 TTS SSML example here (3rd example in this section) # http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/What's_new_in_Windows_Phone_8#Speech:_Text-to-Speech
There's a few handy SSML simple examples here. One of these examples might be what you're looking for. Wrapping the contents of the <speak/> command with a "<prosody rate='+0.3'>speaking 30% faster.</prosody>" element might be the thing you need.
Related
First, a quick description of the end-goal:
I'm building a cross-platform, .NET Core-based, printing app. This app will be able to print all sorts of file types with custom page settings, such as headers, footers, and margins. A key feature is it supports multiple-pages-up (e.g. a landscape sheet of paper with two portrait pages rendered side by side...called "2up").
Printing HTML is important not just because of printing HTML, but I want to use all the great HTML-based syntax-highlighting out there for source code (e.g. www.prismjs.com).
The app is basically done but for one major problem: I can't get the HTML to render well enough. So far I've implemented source code printing three ways:
1) As plain text with my own line-numbering and line-wrap engine. This works wonderfully for everything I can throw at it, but it does not support syntax highlighting.
2) Using Html-Renderer (https://github.com/ArthurHub/HTML-Renderer/issues) an OSS .NET-based Html Renderer. This implementation is the weakest because Html-Renderer's CSS support is really weak. It can't handle hardly anything prismjs or highlightjs' generate.
3) Usinglitehtml' (www.litehtml.com) via LiteHtmlSharp. This was very promising and I almost have it working with some major hacks, but litehtml also does not support key, modern, HTML/CSS features.
Neither Html-Renderer or litehtml support the CSS page-break-before feature that, when combined with media print would let me ensure lines are not split between pages.
What I really want to use is the Chromium rendering engine. litehtml provides a fantastic API for this sort of problem: It calls me whenever it needs to render, and I draw (text, table borders, images, etc...) using GDI+. My dream is to find something in Chromium (CEF, Puppeteer, ???) that provides a similar API.
Or, an alternative, an API that will let me pass in a GDI+ Graphics (or HDC) and the renderer will render to that surface.
With Html-Renderer I measure calculate # pages like this.
SizeF size = HtmlRender.MeasureGdiPlus(g, html, containingSheet.GetPageWidth());
int numPages = (int)(size.Height / containingSheet.GetPageHeight());
My page rendering code (e.g. OnPaint) looks like this:
SizeF size = new SizeF(containingSheet.GetPageWidth(), containingSheet.GetPageHeight());
HtmlRender.RenderGdiPlus(g, html, PointF(0, 0), size );
With htmllite the OnPaint code looks like this:
// Set the clip such that any extraLines are clipped off bottom
g.SetClip(new Rectangle(0, 0, (int)Math.Round(PageSize.Width), (int)Math.Round(PageSize.Height - remainingPartialLineHeight)));
LiteHtmlSize size = new LiteHtmlSize(Math.Round(PageSize.Width), Math.Ceiling(PageSize.Height));
litehtml.Document.Draw((int)-0, (int)-yPos, new position {
x = 0,
y = 0,
width = (int)size.Width,
height = (int)size.Height
});
And in this case the call to litehtml.Document.Draw causes a bunch of callbacks into my app that I process using the same Graphics the OnPaint is called with.
Most discussions of CEF and Chromium point to ScreenshotAsync etc... which will not do because I need to be rendering to a PRINTERS HDC (or GDI+) and blitting bitmaps will loose quality.
I have poured over the Chromium source and I cannot find the obvious way to say to CEF/Chromium "render page 1 (defined as Height/Width) to this GDI+ Graphics object" then "render page 2..." etc... The printing support (and how pdfium is integrated come close!).
Chromium issue 311308 indicates I'm hosed until this work gets picked up again.
Note: I have full access to nodejs w/in my app. I have built a dotnet/nodejs bridge, which is how I convert the raw text file of a source code file to richly formatted, line-numbered, syntax-highlighted html via prismjs. This means I could easily use puppeteer/Headless Chrome if I could just figure out the right APIs.
Does anyone have a suggestion that might help? I'm willing to contribute to Chromium if it's not major heart surgery.
How can I implement the behaviour of an Android Toast, that is, a floating message that is auto dismissed after some seconds without requiring a user interaction?
Thanks
In Windows Phone there are toasts available. They can be showed on demand or be scheduled. They are shown at the top of the screen and dissapear after a while. A sample toast showed on demand can look like this:
ToastTemplateType toastTemplate = ToastTemplateType.ToastText02;
XmlDocument toastXml = ToastNotificationManager.GetTemplateContent(toastTemplate);
XmlNodeList textElements = toastXml.GetElementsByTagName("text");
textElements[0].AppendChild(toastXml.CreateTextNode("MyApp"));
textElements[1].AppendChild(toastXml.CreateTextNode("Message"));
ToastNotificationManager.CreateToastNotifier().Show(new ToastNotification(toastXml));
You will find more information at MSDN.
NOTE that the code above is for WP8.1 RunTime and Universal apps. If you are looking for Silverlight example, take a look st ShellToast and tutorial at MSDN.
I have a Windows Store (Metro) application. I need to add support for scanning barcodes.
I tried using ZXing first. From what I was able to get working, you actually need to click and save an image for it to do the processing. There's no nice overlay of a red line "scanner" nor does it process a live feed. This isn't a very elegant solution. It works far better on Android. Basically, this won't work as I need a constant video and a constant search for a barcode to be in focus.
This blog (http://www.soulier.ch/?p=1275&lang=en) mentions that extrapolating a frame out of a WinRT video stream is not allowed in managed code which means I'd need to use C++.
So, are there any components out there that do this? Anything free or paid that I can get that would be written in C++ and can find and extrapolate a barcode? Learning C++ is not on my bucket list.
You can capture frames while displaying a preview with C# only. Here's an example control that does it:
https://winrtxamltoolkit.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#WinRTXamlToolkit/Controls/CameraCaptureControl/CameraCaptureControl.cs
Basically you need to create a MediaCapture object and associate it with a CaptureElement control to display the preview. Then you can use CapturePhotoToStreamAsync() to capture a frame to a stream of your selected encoding format and then have a go at it with your bar code reading code.
I made a lib for WinRT using ZXing & Imaging SDK.
It works well (but does not include any additional focus feature).
There is a lib and a sample app that you can try.
It works for barcodes and QRCode (barcode by default but just change the optional parameter in the scan function code to use QRCode)
I am writing a new WP8 app using the off-the-shelf LongListSelector that is shipped in the Microsoft.Phone.Controls assembly. Can anyone provide a code example that implements pull-to-refresh, originally made popular by Tweetie for iPhone and now common on iOS and Android? The existing examples use non-standard controls and I'd like to maintain my use of LongListSelector in WP8.
EDIT
I have found a good answer on StackOverflow describing the Twitter sample and how to do this in more detail:
Continuous Pagination with LongListSelector
You do not.
Pull-to-refresh is not a standard Windows Phone interaction, and you therefore should not implement it.
No native/first-party Windows Phone application use this functionality, and almost no third-party application does either. There is a reason for that.
To refresh the content of a page (or in your case, a LongListSelector), you should use a refresh ApplicationBacIconButton, just like in the Mail app. That's the standard and preferred way to manage refreshes.
Windows Phone is not Android, nor is it iOS. Keep that in mind when designing an application for it.
It is not a zoo, there are rules.
Actually, I just discovered a project uploaded to the Windows Phone Dev Center on November 30, 2012 that implements "infinite scrolling" using Twitter Search and Windows Phone 8 LongListSelector.
Download this project at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wpapps/TwitterSearch-Windows-b7fc4e5e
If you really must do this (see answer by Miguel Rochefort) then details can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasongin/archive/2011/04/13/pull-down-to-refresh-a-wp7-listbox-or-scrollviewer.aspx
Basically, the ScrollViewer has hidden/undocumented states that allow for detecting "compression" at the top or bottom of the list and you can use this to trigger the loading.
This is not completely trivial, but one way of doing it is to use GestureService
this.gestureListener = GestureService.GetGestureListener(containerPage);
this.gestureListener.DragStarted += gestureListener_DragStarted;
this.gestureListener.DragCompleted += gestureListener_DragCompleted;
this.gestureListener.DragDelta += gestureListener_DragDelta;
However, it has some bugs. For example, DragCompleted is not always raised, so you need to double-check for that using ManipulationCompleted event, which seems to be more reliable.
containerPage.ManipulationStarted += delegate { this.manipulationInProgress = true; };
containerPage.ManipulationCompleted += delegate
{
this.manipulationInProgress = false;
PerformDragComplete();
};
Another issue is that DragDelta occasionally reports bad coordinates. So you would need a fix like this:
Point refPosition = e.GetPosition(null);
if (refPosition.X == 0 && refPosition.Y == 0)
{
Tracer.WriteLine("Skipping buggy event");
return;
}
Finally, you can find if list is all the way at the top:
public double VerticalOffset
{
get
{
ViewportControl viewportControl = this.FindChildByName("ViewportControl") as ViewportControl;
if (viewportControl != null)
{
Tracer.WriteLine("ViewPort.Bounds.Top=" + viewportControl.Bounds.Top + " ViewPort.Top=" + viewportControl.Viewport.Top.ToString() + " State=" + this.ManipulationState);
return viewportControl.Bounds.Top - viewportControl.Viewport.Top;
}
return double.NaN;
}
}
You can check out the samples in
https://github.com/Kinnara/WPToolkit
it has an excellent implementation something called a ListView extension of the longllistselector control, that will really help you out.
and remember with longlistselector always try to load 20 items atleast. =)
As the WP8 LLS doesn't use a scrollviewer, I guess you will have to inspect the UI tree to get a hold on the viewport control and see what you can do with ViewportControl.Viewport property ...
Oh ... the twitter application is now using the pull to refresh interaction. I like the UI guidelines of the WP platform but rules, once mastered, are made to be broken ;)
This post here can give you hints on how to get the viewport control and retreive the scrolling offset. this scrolling offset must be of a particular value when the list is bouncing
I want to create a swf or air app that takes an input and displays a graphic representation of it.
The graphic side is fine for the moment, but its always using an mp3 for example
var sound:Sound = new Sound (new URLRequest("myMP3.mp3"));
- i want it to be able to take a 'live' audio feed. How would I do that and is there a better way than using the microphone input?
thanks
dai2
Microphone input is probably the easiest way and using flash player 10.1 or AIR 2.0 you can do this. Take a look at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/using_mic_api.html
It's not as easy as using SoundMixer.computeSpectrum but offers the possibility (+ more). You'll for instance most likely want to run the data through FFT to use in visualization