Android TTS add languages

Question

I would like to develop an app that uses TTS for many languages. The problem is that only few languages come with specific devices, depending on the country I suppose (I'm talking about PICO). Is there a way to use a TTS engin embedded in my apk or find somewhere online the missing PICO files and put them in the apk... or any other solution to support languages but present in the device by default?

Answer 1

Read this article: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/09/introduction-to-text-to-speech-in.html

There is an intent (action - ACTION_INSTALL_TTS_DATA) which automatically will downloaded required languages.

Also, I believe you can do two things

a) Implement your own service based on http://developer.android.com/reference/android/speech/tts/TextToSpeechService.html).

b) You can load some custom files using API - addEarcon(String earcon, String filename) (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/speech/tts/TextToSpeech.html)