SSML using Chrome TTS

Question

I'm trying to give a little more clarity to TTS sentences by indicating emphasis, etc. I'm using the Chrome TTS API, which indicates that it accepts SSML-formatted documents in addition to raw text.

After many attempts, and a reading a few comments on the web, it doesn't look like this is actually supported, or possibly that this is up to individual voices for implementation.

Does anyone know:

• Has SSML been abandoned under Chrome?
• If not, is there any indication whether they expect to support it via native voice, or they're hoping that someone else will implement?
• Do any Chrome voices currently exist that support this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm a Chrome engineer. SSML support has not been implemented yet, but it's planned. Obviously not all engines would support it, but when we implement SSML support we'll also implement support for stripping SSML from engines that don't support it.

Sorry the documentation is misleading here.

Star this bug to express interest and get notified when it's fixed: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=88072

Answer 2

If anyone's looking at this later, you can control prosody on Mac Chrome using Apple's native command syntax, at least for the default voices:

the square root of [[pbas +4]] 2 [[char LTRL]]a[[char NORM]] to the [[pbas +4]] 14 [[char LTRL]]x[[char NORM]]

Documented here.