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Re: Mathematica text-to-speech?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg13941] Re: [mg13907] Mathematica text-to-speech?
  • From: John Fultz <jfultz>
  • Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 02:52:37 -0400
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I believe that Macintosh has some kind of speech control panel or
extension which is, among other things, made available through Apple
developers kits and perhaps more recent OS releases (I'm a little
uncertain about the Mac side).  Suitable text-to-speech software on
Windows would be something that provides a text-to-speech engine
compatible with the Microsoft Speech SDK 3.0 (I think 2.0 might work,
too).  Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with which vendors support this.

While I've seen Mac and Windows versions work at some point, don't count
on them for any real work.  The text-to-speech interfaces are barely at
the toy/experimental level at this point, and they've received
virtually no testing.

Sincerely,

John Fultz
jfultz at wolfram.com
Front End Group
Wolfram Research, Inc.

> Glynn & Gray's "The Beginner's Guide to Mathematica Version 3"
> tantalizing mentions two commands for converting Mathematica text to
> speech:
> 
> - the "low-level packet" SpeakTextPacket[text]    (page 264)
> 
> - the "command token" SelectionSpeak              (page 277)
> 
> (Both are iconically marked with the wolf character to indicate they are
> unsupported/unofficial.)
> 
> The descriptions of both include the qualification that they work only
> on Macintosh and Windows and only if you have suitable text-to-speech
> system software.
> 
> What is such "suitable text-to-speech" software on both the Mac and
> Windows 95/NT platforms?
> 
> Do the two commands work at all with the currently-released Mathematica
> 3.0.1?  (Note that G & G refer here and there so a version 3.1.)
> 
> -- 
>   Murray Eisenberg                  Internet:  murray at math.umass.edu
>   Mathematics & Statistics Dept.    Voice:  413-545-2859 (W)
>   University of Massachusetts               413-549-1020 (H)
>   Amherst, MA 01003                 Fax:    413-545-1801
> 



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