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Re: best text to speech ap to show my non-geek sighted friends?

for

From: Phil Teare
Date: Mar 1, 2008 7:20AM

Thank so much for all the feedback.

Some responses:


On 01/03/2008, shawn klein < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Thanks Phil. The blog is interesting, but a bit slow
> to respond. This may just be because my computer is
> 4-1/2 years old with only 768 MB of ram. My download
> speed is 1.5 mb/s, but my upload speed is only 256
> kb/s, this could also effect things.



This shouldn't usually be a problem. Text that is not yet cached (the blogs
cache was deleted two days ago, so most of it) will take a little while to
respond, but is always usable - within reason). Text that is cached should
read very quickly (sub 400ms). We're currently working on reducing this
further, and for uncached text). The biggest performance hinderance is if
your using Firebug or similar on FF. Its still usable, but much slower if
you have firebug installed and active. Can I ask if you had this or similar
running?


I had a bit of
> trouble understanding some of what the voice was
> saying in regards to the hotkeys, but I couldn't make
> it spell what I missed.


I've added to the roadmap. It will make it into 2.5 all being well (should
be released at the end of the summer).


I played it 3 times before I
> got it, all but one. It seems to be saying that X
> takes you to the next dive. Although it seems to take
> you to the next line of text.


Sorry, my fault. Chatterblogs is beta, and the instructions are out of
synch. I'll see to it.


I had to think for a
> second before I realized that full stop must be
> period.


Interesting point. We're growing in the US (I'm in the UK), so I'll make
sure instructions get more properly localized. Although, if you're on a uk
site with a UK voice, the laguage with be UK centric.


I tested NB, which put me in input mode, but
> then f8 didn't work.


Again, instructions out of synch. Sorry. 2.0b is looking into simplifying,
and not using an input mode at all. I'll let you know when I've polished
this, and updated the instructions accordingly, if you would like to give
more feedback, I would be hugely grateful.


... may be because I was using
> Firefox.


I go to great lengths to make sure FF and IE are as feature, function, and
frills idendical as is possible. Safari will sometimes be out of sink, but
degrade graceful, to have as much function as is possible (e.g. it doesn't
currently have realtime word by word highlighting, but FF and IE do).

Natural voices are cool, but I think they
> have a ways to go.


I realy like our voices, but voice easthetics will always be very
subjective. Some of the US voices are a little more inteligable, while
retaining the fuidity and elegance. The Talklet system currently allows web
account users to change the voices centrally, we're also looking at allowing
any user to change voices. Licensing issues are the only hold up there
really, but we're looking at this.

We also have our own bespoke voices. So larger customers can even get their
own done (which adds to the variety for everyone else).


My
> biggest issue was some lack of feedback. When you are
> working with something that's slow to react, lack of
> feedback is troublesome. I think that's what it was
> anyway, sometimes I would press x to go to the next
> line and would hear nothing.


x is deprecated in 2.0. Sorry, again, its the instructions on the beta that
should be changed. I'll get on it. However, we want to key the keys a
minimal as possible, so as to not overwhelm new users.


Hope you found it useful.

Best
Phil


--
Phil Teare,
CTO & Chief Architect,
http://www.talklets.com from Textic Ltd.
(44) [0] 208 4452871