UI frontend for Thorsten-Voice (🇩🇪)

[thorstenMueller]

I am by no means a front-end developer, but I would like to provide a simple interface application with which my Thorsten voices can be easily used.

Requirements:

• A single code base and interface for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
• Either a final binary file that can be executed directly or an installer that works on the operating systems mentioned.
• My TV models and Piper as an application should be automatically downloaded by the program (incl. licenses).
• All TV voice types should be selectable via a selection field (neutral, Hessian, sleepy, disgusted, happy, ...).
• The majority of the interface should be an editable text field where the text to be spoken is entered.
• In addition to manual text input, the text should also be able to be imported as text and PDF files.
• A search & replace function should be possible (to replace headers of PDF imports, for example).
• When importing PDFs, only certain pages should be able to be imported (e.g. only pages 4-6).
• Markup in the text should be supported (e.g. "NEW_CHAPTER"). A WAV/MP3 file could end there and a new one started. This would allow you to have a separate output file for each chapter.
• The WAV output from Piper TTS should also be made available as an MP3 file using a checkbox.
• In case of MP3 output format and multiple chapters a M3U playlist file with correct order should be written.
• Possibly also a direct output function instead of saving to a WAV output file.
• SBOM file included.
• List of used open source projects and licences
• ... more ideas?

Possible technologies:

Here I really need feedback on what makes technological sense these days for frontend development.

• React
• QT
• Electron
• Java
• Tauri
• Flutter Desktop
• Tkinter
• Dear PyGui

I'm looking forward to your comments. Especially with regard to the technology. I have to familiarize myself with all of them - so I'm pretty flexible.

If i have a useable frontend i might extend it as special version for all international piper tts models.

[thorstenMueller]

Played around with flutter. Just took a base example/template and added some ui elements with combo and input fields. Could be worth a closer look. Build my hello-world test for linux, windows and mac os x and was runnable on all os 🤩. Of course not correct versioned or signed, but at least was able to start.

Now let's see if flutter works when adding some business logic.

[thorstenMueller]

As i am absolutely not creative on "good" UI/UX design i asked ai for support ;-). Doesn't really look modern for 2024 but is at least more creative than i am. What do you think about a ui like this?

@domcross any addition thoughts?