News
Mac: iSpeak It 1.6 released
It’s a common problem, you have so much to read but not enough time to read it all. Well, now you don’t have to. With iSpeak It you can take any document and convert it into an MP3 in iTunes using your Mac’s built-in text-to-speech capabilities. From there you can listen to it at your leisure or, better yet, transfer it to your iPod and listen to it on the go!
What’s new in this version:
The ability download RSS/XML news feeds
Control of the iTunes encoder from within iSpeak It
Splitting paragraphs separated by a single return (as is common with Word documents)
A number of minor enhancements and bug fixes
License: Shareware $8.95
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.2 or greater
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Comments
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1
Does anyone think we honestly want to listen to Turn of the Screw as read by Victoria?
Posted by Mortimer in Irvine, CA on April 2, 2004 at 3:04 AM (CST)
1
Wow!! how aboutt a windows version of it??
Posted by Yarin in Irvine, CA on April 2, 2004 at 3:30 AM (CST)
1
Turn of the Skrew got censored? Henry James? Awful.
Posted by Mortimer in Irvine, CA on April 2, 2004 at 12:29 PM (CST)
1
I wouldn’t use it for a book-length work, but I will say that Mac OS X speech is surprisingly good. It sounds “odd” like most computer voices (the new Vicki is the most natural), but I’ve found from listening to text-to-speech in Unreal Tournament 2004 that you CAN understand it quite well without glancing at the text, even while doing other things. So this could have potential uses.
Posted by Nagromme in Irvine, CA on May 19, 2004 at 11:18 AM (CDT)
1
There’s already an applescript that will render text-to-speech, for free. I’ve used it for many news articles.
property voice_names : {"Agnes", "Albert", "Bad News", "Bahh", "Bells", "Boing", "Bruce", "Bubbles", "Cellos", "Deranged", "Fred", "Good News", "Hysterical", "Junior", "Kathy", "Organ", "Princess", "Ralph", "Trinoids", "Victoria", "Whisper", "Zarvox"}
property default_voice : “Victoria”
set this_voice to “”
set this_string to “Welcome to Mac OS Ten!”
try
repeat
display dialog “Enter the text to render to a sound file:” default answer this_string buttons {"Cancel", "Try", "Render"} default button 3
copy the result as list to {this_string, button_pressed}
if this_string is “” then
beep
else if the button_pressed is “Try” then
set this_voice to (choose from list voice_names default items default_voice with prompt “Pick the voice to use:”) as string
if this_voice is “false” then
exit repeat
else
set default_voice to this_voice
end if
say this_string using this_voice
else
if this_voice is “” then
set this_voice to (choose from list voice_names default items default_voice with prompt “Pick the voice to use:”) as string
if this_voice is “false” then
exit repeat
else
set default_voice to this_voice
end if
end if
set the target_file to choose file name with prompt “Name and location for the sound file:” default name “rendered.aiff”
say this_string using default_voice saving to target_file
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then
display dialog error_message buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1
end if
end try
Posted by Rhomboid in Irvine, CA on May 19, 2004 at 8:21 PM (CDT)
1
Sorry, tried pasting the script, but it didn’t take.
Posted by Rhomboid in Irvine, CA on May 19, 2004 at 8:22 PM (CDT)
1
Render text to speech can be found on this page. http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/
Posted by Rhomboid in Irvine, CA on May 19, 2004 at 8:34 PM (CDT)