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[safari] Voicing/SpeechSynthesis is buggy in multiple iframes

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
frontend

Research direction

Reproduce the supplied multi-iframe SpeechSynthesis cases in Safari and compare them with Chrome using the provided iframe examples. No repository files or tests are named; trace the utterance-queue behavior involved in the reproduction and document the conditions under which speech stops. Done means the failure mode is established and a fix or clear limitation is verified.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

dev:voicing

@Nancy-Salpepi reported this bug originally in https://github.com/phetsims/phet-io-wrappers/issues/459. We are finding that our voicing in our sims behaves quite badly when running multiple sims in iframes on the same page in safari.

Test 1:



<iframe src="https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/html/ratio-and-proportion/1.2.0-dev.31/phet/ratio-and-proportion_all_phet.html?voicingInitiallyEnabled&preferencesStorage"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/html/ratio-and-proportion/1.2.0-dev.31/phet/ratio-and-proportion_all_phet.html?voicingInitiallyEnabled&preferencesStorage"></iframe>
<iframe src="https://phet-dev.colorado.edu/html/ratio-and-proportion/1.2.0-dev.31/phet/ratio-and-proportion_all_phet.html?voicingInitiallyEnabled&preferencesStorage"></iframe>

This consistently showed that the last iframe's voicing worked perfectly, but the other two were silent. Behavior is great on chrome, with all three iframes working.

Then I added @marlitas and @samreid (our resident safari devices holders) and we made this test:

iframe contents:


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8"/>
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1"/>
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/>

  <title>Speech synthesiser</title>

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"/>
</head>

<body>
<h1>Speech synthesiser</h1>

<p>
  Enter some text in the input below and press return or the "play" button
  to hear it. change voices using the dropdown menu.
</p>

<form>
  <label for="txt">Enter text</label>
  <input id="txt" type="text" class="txt"/>
  <div>
    <label for="rate">Rate</label
    ><input type="range" min="0.5" max="2" value="1" step="0.1" id="rate"/>
    <div class="rate-value">1</div>
    <div class="clearfix"></div>
  </div>
  <div>
    <label for="pitch">Pitch</label
    ><input type="range" min="0" max="2" value="1" step="0.1" id="pitch"/>
    <div class="pitch-value">1</div>
    <div class="clearfix"></div>
  </div>
  <select></select>
  <div class="controls">
    <button id="play" type="submit">Play</button>
  </div>
</form>

<script>
  const synth = window.speechSynthesis;

  const inputForm = document.querySelector( "form" );
  const inputTxt = document.querySelector( ".txt" );
  const voiceSelect = document.querySelector( "select" );

  const pitch = document.querySelector( "#pitch" );
  const pitchValue = document.querySelector( ".pitch-value" );
  const rate = document.querySelector( "#rate" );
  const rateValue = document.querySelector( ".rate-value" );

  let voices = [];

  function populateVoiceList() {
    voices = synth.getVoices().sort( function( a, b ) {
      const aname = a.name.toUpperCase();
      const bname = b.name.toUpperCase();

      if ( aname < bname ) {
        return -1;
      }
      else if ( aname == bname ) {
        return 0;
      }
      else {
        return +1;
      }
    } );
    const selectedIndex =
      voiceSelect.selectedIndex < 0 ? 0 : voiceSelect.selectedIndex;
    voiceSelect.innerHTML = "";

    for ( let i = 0; i < voices.length; i++ ) {
      const option = document.createElement( "option" );
      option.textContent = `${voices[ i ].name} (${voices[ i ].lang})`;

      if ( voices[ i ].default ) {
        option.textContent += " -- DEFAULT";
      }

      option.setAttribute( "data-lang", voices[ i ].lang );
      option.setAttribute( "data-name", voices[ i ].name );
      voiceSelect.appendChild( option );
    }
    voiceSelect.selectedIndex = selectedIndex;
  }

  populateVoiceList();

  if ( speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged !== undefined ) {
    speechSynthesis.onvoiceschanged = populateVoiceList;
  }

  function speak() {
    // if ( synth.speaking ) {
    //   console.error( "speechSynthesis.speaking" );
    //   return;
    // }

    if ( inputTxt.value !== "" ) {
      const utterThis = new SpeechSynthesisUtterance( inputTxt.value );

      utterThis.onend = function( event ) {
        console.log( "SpeechSynthesisUtterance.onend" );
      };

      utterThis.onerror = function( event ) {
        console.error( "SpeechSynthesisUtterance.onerror" );
      };

      const selectedOption =
        voiceSelect.selectedOptions[ 0 ].getAttribute( "data-name" );

      for ( let i = 0; i < voices.length; i++ ) {
        if ( voices[ i ].name === selectedOption ) {
          utterThis.voice = voices[ i ];
          break;
        }
      }
      utterThis.pitch = pitch.value;
      utterThis.rate = rate.value;
      console.log( inputTxt.value );
      synth.speak( utterThis );
    }
  }

  inputForm.onsubmit = function( event ) {
    event.preventDefault();

    let count = 0;
    const id = setInterval( () => {
      speak();
      count++;

      if ( count >= 5 ) {
        clearInterval( id );
      }
    }, 1000 );

    inputTxt.blur();
  };

  pitch.onchange = function() {
    pitchValue.textContent = pitch.value;
  };

  rate.onchange = function() {
    rateValue.textContent = rate.value;
  };

  voiceSelect.onchange = function() {
    speak();
  };
</script>
</body>
</html>

outer webpage:

<html>
<body>
<iframe src="html.html" width="800" height="400"></iframe>
<iframe src="html.html" width="800" height="400"></iframe>
</body>
</html>

In that we got semi sporadic behavior where it is possible that when only interacting with iframe 1, we hear a single voiced alert and then never hear anything again.

It is also possible that we hear everything from iframe 1, but then when go to use the second iframe, we hear just a single voiced alert, and then never anything again. We will need to investigate more, but I believe this should block voicing sims until we learn more about it.

Dominant language
TypeScript
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