Yea, I forgot about Kurzweil as I use the Apple now and use a little utility called Ghostreader to turn my text files into mp3s. I'm not crazy about any of the SAPI voices though, so even if I had access to Kurzweil I wouldn't use it, but since Kurzweil can make DAISY files, can it put the tts to a bookshare book?
On May 1, 2009, at 9:43 PM, Shelley Rhodes wrote:
Text Aloud or Text to Audio both have this feature and benefit. Also if you have it ahem, Kurzweil 1000 from version 7 and up will make MP3 or Wav files of any file you ask of it and it will break the book into "reasonable" chunks." You can also use any speech engine installed on your computer, so I have eliquence, Scansoft, ATT natural voices, Voiceware. I am not positive but I believe that Openbook offers this feature too.There is software out there called Read Please that will read text files in a window. And there is Nonvisual Desktop Access With Speech but I haven't played much with this application. Kurzweil also in version 11 can make daisy files.You can purchase voices to add on and find free ones at www.nextup.com the makers of Text aloud. Shelley L. Rhodes, M.A., VRT And Guinevere: Golden Lady Guide Dog guidinggolden@xxxxxxxxx Guide Dogs for the Blind Alumni Association www.guidedogs.comThe people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed. -Gil Bailie, author and lecturer (b. 1944)----- Original Message ----- From: "Campbell, Wiley L. (Portland)" <Wiley.Campbell@xxxxxx >To: <bookcourier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 12:37 PM Subject: [bookcourier] Simulating DoubleTalk without a BookCourierI know it's a work around, but I vaguely recall hearing about methods to convert txt files to audio using a screen reader, or some other text toaudio utility? E. G. I can adjust my JAWS voice to certainly read as well or better than DoubleTalk, and I could record JAWS reading a textfile to an audio format like mp3; Then load that on a Stream or PlexTalkand at least have good speech quality for text file reading without relying on the built in TTS. Is there some simpler utility / method that accomplishes the sameresult? Especially a method that can handle large text files like books?And perhaps even convert text files to one of the DAISY audio formats that a Stream or PlexTalk could use, rather than just trying to create huge mp3 files. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.comVersion: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.13/2091 - Release Date: 05/01/09 17:52:00
