"The music thing button with the Frutiger Aero doesn't work on the podcasts."
The podcast page is a full-screen overlay at z-45 and the control sat at z-40:
visible through the transparent page, but every tap landed on the overlay.
The control now takes a data-raised="player" position on /podcast/[id] -
z-index 46, docked to the header's corner (top under the header pill, right
mirroring the max-w-3xl geometry) where neither the transport bar nor the
voice panel lives - and the transcript gained pt-32 so the episode card clears
it. Study/review/exam feeds keep their "steps aside" behaviour.
aero-music-test: a podcast section asserts the control exists, that
elementFromPoint at its centre hits the button, and that a tap expands the
credit bar. 31 checks. Version 0.7.9, SW v101.
"The podcasts don't even work on my Linux setup on Firefox." Firefox on
Linux speaks through speech-dispatcher; without it speechSynthesis is present
but empty and silent - getVoices() is empty, speak() does nothing, no events
- so the player looked broken.
- pressing play with zero installed voices (or a start that never arrives
within 1.7s) raises a banner naming the cause, with the Linux fix
(sudo apt install speech-dispatcher) and the iOS one where it applies;
- the banner offers "Use the natural voice" when a provider key exists (it
switches the source, keeps playing and remembers it), "Add a provider key"
when not (opens Settings) and a link into the picker;
- natural-voice errors (refused autoplay, provider refusal) show in that same
banner instead of hiding inside the picker.
podcast-test fakes a present-but-empty speechSynthesis and pins the banner,
the Linux line and the one-tap switch. 48 checks. Version 0.7.8, SW v100.
"It only plays once, and when you pause it you can't unpause."
WebKit leaves speechSynthesis paused after a cancel(), and every later
speak() is queued into that paused state - silently. Fixes:
- resume() whenever the synth is paused, before speaking and after our own
cancel;
- a ~90ms beat before a speak() that follows a cancel (several engines drop
it otherwise);
- no cancel when nothing is pending.
The speech engine also no longer rebuilds on rate or voice changes: both are
read live through getters, so a voiceschanged arriving after the first
utterance cannot leave a second engine speaking over the first. A rate or
voice change restarts the current part from the same word instead (the Web
Speech API cannot change either mid-utterance), making the change audible at
once; the natural engine applies speed live and resumes across a voice swap.
The suite's speech stub now models the quirk (cancel -> paused, speak while
paused is dropped and counted) and pins that nothing is ever spoken into a
paused engine. 44 checks. Version 0.7.7, SW v99.
Two reports, one root: the platform's speech engine.
"Loud cracking at the end of every sentence" is the browser/OS TTS popping
between its internal sentence chunks (an idle cancel makes it worse). Hygiene
for that path: never cancel when nothing is pending, normalise the spoken text
(control characters, ellipses, dashes), and a 140ms beat between sections so
speech never runs into the engine's tail.
The real fix is a second voice source that does not use the platform engine:
- lib/providers carries TTS profiles (OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts, Groq
playai-tts, any OpenAI-compatible /audio/speech behind the custom provider),
male voices first.
- /api/tts proxies them with the same guards and the key still in headers.
- the picker gains System / Natural, with the provider's voice list.
- lib/podcast-audio plays one clip per section through a hidden <audio>
element, measures the clip's real duration and gives each word a slice of it
proportional to its spoken length - the highlight follows the audio exactly,
and pause/seek/chapters become real audio operations. Clips cache per
session, the next section generates while the current plays, and a voice
change disposes the element and its blobs. Speed applies live (setRate)
without dropping the cache.
podcast-test stubs /api/tts with a real silent WAV and pins the path: the
voice list, the request body, exactly one playing element, and the highlight
riding currentTime. 43 checks. tests/lib.mjs launches Chromium with the
autoplay policy relaxed (a real device has the listener's gesture).
Version 0.7.6, SW v98.
Safari hands web pages one voice per language, whatever the iPhone has
installed, so the picker cannot fix that on iOS. It now carries the way out
instead: Accessibility -> Spoken Content -> Voices -> your language, download
an Enhanced/Premium voice and make it preferred. The speaker button wears an
amber dot while the note is waiting, and the voice-less banner appends the
same guidance. Detection covers iPadOS too (maxTouchPoints, since it reports
as a Mac).
The suite fakes an iPhone user agent, a single Daniel voice and pins the dot
and the note's actual steps (37 checks). Version 0.7.5, SW v97.
"The scrolling works kinda weirdly" + "maybe a less robotic voice, preferably
male".
Scroll: the transcript now follows by LINE, not by word - words on the same
line never move the page (that was the jitter), a line only scrolls once it
leaves a comfortable band, small corrections are instant rather than animated,
and a wheel/touch/drag on the transcript pauses the following for four seconds
instead of fighting the reader. Chapter jumps and word taps re-centre at once.
Voice: lib/podcast-voices ranks what the platform installed (natural / neural
/ online names up, espeak / SAM / compact down, a male name preferred) and the
player picks the best one automatically; a new picker in the chrome lists
everything in the episode's language, applies it live and remembers the choice
per language. A note points at the system settings when only robotic voices
exist. The engine takes the chosen voice instead of guessing.
podcast-test: 34 checks now (voice ranking, filtered picker, persisted pick,
same-line silence, line following, manual-scroll suspension). Version 0.7.4,
SW v96.
The third segment of the note-powered wizards (Study deck / Homework /
Podcast) takes the same intake - photos, documents, pasted text, the share
target - and turns it into a spoken episode.
- prompts: PODCAST_SYSTEM_PROMPT writes for the ear (plain prose, no markdown,
no visual references), chaptered into 3-8 sections around a length target.
- /api/podcast mirrors /api/generate's plumbing (rate limit, model gate,
provider keys, heartbeats, the 2x deadline, the optional vision pass).
- storage: frezmo.podcasts.v1, zod-validated, included in the backup and the
encrypted sync payload; a new library tab lists episodes with listen /
rename / delete-with-undo, and the wizard switch deep-links in.
- player: the transcript is word-wrapped spans and the word under the voice
rides a lyric-style highlight that keeps itself centred. Two clocks: exact
onboundary events where the browser reports them, a per-word length timer
where it does not (iOS Safari); the first boundary retires the timer.
Pause = cancel + re-speak from the word, which makes resume, chapter jumps
and tap-any-word-to-seek the same operation; the position saves on pause,
page-hide and unmount, so reopening resumes. Speed rebuilds the engine and
keeps playing; the Aero soundtrack pauses itself when the voice starts; a
browser with no voice gets an honest note and a readable transcript.
- the script sits on a glass pane (plain paragraphs over Aero's grass failed
contrast; the scan now covers the player too).
tests/podcast-test.mjs (17th suite) stubs the model and the speech engine and
drives the highlight by hand: 26 checks. All suites green, contrast clean.
Version 0.7.3, SW v95.
