Support emoticons and emoji symbols (Zsye). about espeak-ng

[Gushasad]

So if I understand correctly, this will not be possible in near future?

[rhdunn]

Not in the current plan. I am working on improving espeak-ng to better support different voices at the moment, and only have my spare time to work on espeak. Other people could work on this, but full emoticon/emoji support is complex, and would need a design being planned first to make sure that the general approach is ok.

[valdisvi]

It is not too hard to add pronunciation for proper unicode emoticons e.g. ☺ and 😟
But pronunciation for specific character sequences is much harder, as eSpeak was not intended to handle "improper" use of punctuation.

[rhdunn]

Another problem is that there are a large number of emoji. Emojipedia puts this at 1,394 (excluding variants involving sequences of characters like with the flags) -- http://emojipedia.org/stats/. Adding the other Unicode characters (e.g. the card suites and chess pieces) makes the list even larger.

My thinking on that problem is to support a character name table for languages, where these can be stored and updated independently of the dictionary files. For example:

☺️️ smiling face

This would then be pronounced as something like "smiling face character" in English. The flags are also complex as they now support all of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2. That is, you can use things like GB for Great Britain and GBSCT for Scotland. These would need enumerating as well in the character name table:

🇬🇧    great britain flag

The next issue here is how to make the lookup both fast and compact. Something similar to how I have done this with the ucd-tools code could be done. This does not handle multiple unicode characters though, so a better solution should be identified.

A generic character table source file could be used for the general emoticons and recognised symbol sequences that could then be included into the language specific table like how the phoneme table sources can include different source files. For example:

:)    ☺️️

[valdisvi]

As initial support I can add following in dictsource/en_extra

// Emoticons
😀     gr'InIN||f'eIs
😁     gr'InIN||f'eIs||wID||sm'aIlIN 'aIz
😂     f'eIs||wID||t'i@3z||0v||dZ'OI
😃     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID 'oUp@n||m'aUT
😄     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID 'oUp@n||m'aUT_:_: and||sm'aIlIN 'aIz
😅     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID 'oUp@n||m'aUT_:_: and||k'oUld||sw'Et
😆     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID 'oUp@n||m'aUT_:_: and||t'aItlikl'oUzd 'aIz
😇     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID||h'eIloU
😈     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID||h'O@nz
😉     w'INkIN||f'eIs
😊     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID||sm'aIlIN 'aIz
😋     f'eIs||s'eIv3r-IN||dI2l'IS@s||f'u:d
😌     rI2l'i:vd||f'eIs
😍     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID||h'A@tS'eIpt 'aIz
😎     sm'aIlIN||f'eIs||wID||s'VNglaasI2z
😏     sm'3:kIN||f'eIs
😐     nj'u:tr@L||f'eIs
😑     Ekspr'ES@nl@s||f'eIs
😒     Vna#mj'u:sd||f'eIs
😓     f'eIs||wID||k'oUld||sw'Et
😔     p'EnsIv||f'eIs
😕     k@nfj'u:zd||f'eIs
😖     k@nf'aUndI2d||f'eIs
😗     k'IsIN||f'eIs
😘     f'eIs||Tr'oUIN||a# k'Is
😙     k'IsIN||f'eIs||wID||sm'aIlIN 'aIz
😚     k'IsIN||f'eIs||wID||kl'oUzd 'aIz
😛     f'eIs||wID||st'Vk'aUt||t'VN
😜     f'eIs||wID||st'Vk'aUt||t'VN_:_: and||w'INkIN 'aI
😝     f'eIs||wID||st'Vk'aUt||t'VN_:_: and||t'aItlikl'oUzd 'aIz
😞     d,Isa#p'OIntI2d||f'eIs
😟     w'Vrid||f'eIs
😠     'aNgri||f'eIs
😡     p'aUtIN||f'eIs
😢     kr'aIIN||f'eIs
😣     p,3:sIv'i@3rIN||f'eIs
😤     f'eIs||wID||l'Uk||0v||tr'aI;Vmf
😥     d,Isa#p'OIntI2d||b,Vt||rI2l'i:vd||f'eIs
😦     fr'aUnIN||f'eIs||wID 'oUp@n||m'aUT
😧     'aNgwISt||f'eIs
😨     f'i@3f@L||f'eIs
😩     w'i@3ri||f'eIs
😪     sl'i:pi||f'eIs
😫     t'aI@d||f'eIs
😬     gr'ImIsIN||f'eIs
😭     l'aUdli||kr'aIIN||f'eIs
😮     f'eIs||wID 'oUp@n||m'aUT
😯     h'VSt||f'eIs
😰     f'eIs||wID 'oUp@n||m'aUT_:_: and||k'oUld||sw'Et
😱     f'eIs||skr'i:mIN||In||f'i@3
😲     a#st'0nISt||f'eIs
😳     fl'VSt||f'eIs
😴     sl'i:pIN||f'eIs
😵     d'Izi||f'eIs
😶     f'eIs||wID,aUt||m'aUT
😷     f'eIs||wID||m'EdIk@L||m'aask
....

Would it be OK, to do generate similar list for all from (http://www.unicode.org/Public/emoji/1.0/emoji-data.txt) or just some of most popular?
But spelling of e.g. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ can be described only in en_rules, because it is not single (Unicode) character, but word.
To handle such "synonym words", e.g.:

:)             ☺️️
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 🤷

we have to implement #199 item: "replace rule extended to replace not only characters, but group of characters".

[rhdunn]

I would prefer this is:

1. a separate table from the dictionary files -- making it easier to update the dictionary and symbol name files independently;
2. uses words (similar to my proposal for the number support).

Point 2 is to make it easier to support different accents and to avoid transcription errors.

Implementing this will require changes to the espeak-ng code to support this functionality.

Another requirement is to support these through the espeak_ng_SpeakCharacter function (and adding an espeak_ng_SpeakMultiCharacter function for things like flag emoji).

[rhdunn]

Issue #216 is relevant here, and should be the preferred solution in the long-term. That is, the emoji would be defined in en-Zsye, de-Zsye, etc. language dictionaries that if present would be used to speak the emoji characters. The same applies to symbols (Zsym) and mathematical notation (Zmth), as well as reading things like Greek characters (Grek) in English.

The more complex cases are for things like the shrug character (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) that mix punctuation characters with Japanese characters (ツ).

[rhdunn]

I am restricting this to just support reading the Zsye characters, instead of also supporting their ASCII equivalents. This still covers the combined emoji characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji), e.g.:

1. flags
2. skin colours (fitzpatrick skin tones)
3. joined emoji characters (e.g. man+woman+girl = family)