iLounge

1

Does anyone think we honestly want to listen to Turn of the Screw as read by Victoria?

Posted by Mortimer on April 2, 2004 at 12:04 AM (PST)

2

Wow!! how aboutt a windows version of it??

Posted by Yarin on April 2, 2004 at 12:30 AM (PST)

3

Turn of the Skrew got censored? Henry James? Awful.

Posted by Mortimer on April 2, 2004 at 9:29 AM (PST)

4

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 on May 19, 2004 at 7:18 AM (PST)

5

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 on May 19, 2004 at 4:21 PM (PST)

6

Sorry, tried pasting the script, but it didn’t take.

Posted by Rhomboid on May 19, 2004 at 4:22 PM (PST)

7

Render text to speech can be found on this page.  http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/

Posted by Rhomboid on May 19, 2004 at 4:34 PM (PST)