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TextAloud 2.0 User's Manual

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1. EGARDLESS OF an THEORY OF LIABILITY ARISING ar OUT OF THE USE OF OR NABILITY UCH DAMAG without License es Regulation control R FO E Ei Termi Licensee may notice Up Expor S laws S US E nation on terminati Software regulation countries acknowl export 8 If of the tha DFAR age Sof U the U S S S SOFTWAR F 17 EV EN IF N on including technical data including the U S DVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF F EN A an EXTUP HAS B terminate this License at any time by destroying all copies of Software including any documentation from NextUp if Licensee fails to comp Licensee must destroy al This License will terminate immediately ly with any provision of this L copies of Software is subject to U S export Export Administration Act and its associated and may be subject to export or import regulations in other Licensee agrees to comply strictly with al ledges that it has the responsibility to obtain or import Software Government Licensee is acquiring Government Department of Defense t term is defined in in paragraph 252 227 7013 c ncy of the United Sta tware will be as de fi Acquisition Regulations the Government is subjec such regulations and the follow
2. NOTE AT amp T Natural Voices use a significant amount of system memory We recommend 256mb or more of memory for these voices NeoSpeech Voices These are also among the most natural sounding you will find You can hear samples of Neospeech voices at http www nextup com neospeech html These voices are available for purchase at NextUp com They take up nearly 300mb per voice support SAPI4 Only and are available in American English Cepstral Voices These are high quality voices with smaller machine requirements You can hear samples of Cepstral voices at http www nextup com Cepstral html These voices are available for purchase at NextUp com They take up around 25mb per voice support SAPI5 Only are currently available in American English and Scottish Accent English a child s English Voice with more languages are coming soon 14 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 15 e Other Voices NextUp com is adding new voices often so be sure to check with us about newly available voices In addition to the voices listed above TextAloud will attempt to load any other SAPI4 or SAPI5 voices that may be available on your computer If you have other speech products you may have received other voices such as those from IBM or ScanSoft If available these voices will be shown on the Engines Voices TAB in TextAloud available under Options gt Voice and File Options While we have tested with as many voices as possible if you find you h
3. The TextAloud IE Plug In uses the TextAloud main program to accomplish most of its tasks so if TextAloud is not running and you access the toolbar you may notice TextAloud starting and then going to the system tray While text is speaking within Internet Explorer word highlighting is not possible If you wish to see word highlighting with text from web pages consider using the Proofread HotKey detailed in the HotKey Reference section 61 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 62 13 0 Working with E Books and other Large Text Files One popular use of TextAloud is to create your own audio books E Books or computer based books continue to gain in popularity There are now several sites on the internet offering free download of text versions of books Check out e http www promo net pg e http digital library upenn edu books e http www google com search q free text books These and other sites typically have full texts of popular older books available for download They will often have entire books in a single text file Converting texts that large directly to an audio file can cause problems These problems include e Some voice engines have problems with very large texts e When creating audio files WAVE files are created even if eventually you are converting to MP3 or WMA These Wave files are very large and with large books the Wave file can quickly consumer all of your disk space leading to errors e The result
4. TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 6 Speaking the First Time When you first install TextAloud the first thing to do is get it to speak a few words just to make sure installation went well and everything is working TextAloud will be pre loaded with a sample article Simply click the lt Speak gt button or select Speak gt Speak Current Article on the main menu to get TextAloud to talk After this introductory article is spoken you can move on to learning more about how to use the program Four Ways to Load Text There are four main ways to load your text into TextAloud e Clipboard Watching TextAloud can automatically monitor the Windows clipboard Anytime you copy text by highlighting it and hitting Control C TextAloud can import the text Select Options gt TextAloud Options gt Clipboard Options for settings related to this e File gt Open By using this main menu entry TextAloud can directly open text files and documents in txt plain text files rtf rich text files html locally saved web documents doc MS Word Documents and pdf Adobe Acrobat Files e Using HotKeys See Options gt HotKey Setup for a variety of global HotKeys you can setup When working in any program you can highlight text and press a HotKey to have TextAloud speak or import text e Manual Creation By right clicking in the text area of TextAloud then choosing New Article on the popup menu or choosing File gt New Article on the main
5. Control C Once this copy command has been executed the selected text is in the global Windows clipboard meaning it can be used in other programs by Pasting the text into that program Edit gt Paste or Control V 24 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 25 TextAloud s Automatic Clipboard Watching To assist you in importing text of interest into TextAloud TextAloud includes a feature called Clipboard Watching When Clipboard Watching is turned on TextAloud monitors the Windows clipboard for changes and can automatically speak or import the copied text into TextAloud or can pop up a window to give you options on what to do with the text TextAloud s Clipboard Watching is a very flexible system to give you control over how the program behaves when text is copied to the clipboard Settings that control this behavior are available via Options gt TextAloud Options gt Clipboard This settings window is shown below TextAloud Options Atticle Options Clipboard Options Predefined Pauses Skins Miscellaneous M Watch Clipboard Ignore Clipboard Text less than fi 0 characters M Ignore Clipboard Updates if text has not changed Prompt Options M Prompt to copy from clipboard Display Prompt for 3 seconds Default Action Cancel F OK Cancel TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 26 Use this window to control the behavior of clipboard watching Watch Clipboard When checked TextAloud will monitor the Windows c
6. based on the text being synthesized the computer tries to figure out which bits of sound to splice together to make natural sounding words These early voices would take incoming text break each word down to its phonemes select the sound for these phonemes concatenate them together to make words then play that audio This is the basis for all of the current good voice engines However all voices aren t created equally Languages and the way we use them are more complicated than that These complications include e Rise and fall of pitch depending on context for example pitch sometimes rises at the end of questions e Words may be written in identical ways but be pronounced differently based on context He read the book I will read the book e Some words may not be in a voice engine s dictionary a voice developed in 1990 may not know the word eBay or google e Some text is made up of things other than actual words such as URLs Acronyms Roman Numerals symbols TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 10 There are other examples and issues beyond this description The main point to understand is that each voice engine will likely handle things differently in decoding text and creating the sound Many of the newer engines do a much better job handling complicated context and more closely generating natural sounding spoken words An additional factor in how natural sounding the voice will be is the quality and quantity of sound sam
7. documentation and possibly on the front of the player The advantage of having this type of player is a standard data CD filled with MP3 files can be created and used Since MP3 files are very small you could have a CD with hundreds of audio files to listen to as opposed to the 20 or so audio tracks you can put on standard audio CDs The important thing to remember with MP3 CDs is that they must be played back in a special type of CD player and that you burn them just as you would any data CD just filling the CD with MP3 files Standard Audio CDs Standard audio CDs technically known as Red Book are specially formatted CDs containing up to 32 tracks of uncompressed audio with a 44kHz sample rate Burning an Audio CD is different that creating a data CD in that the audio files must be converted to a specific format Most CD burning software products can handle taking TextAloud files and creating audio CDs from them While Audio CDs can handle only about an hour of audio and up to 32 tracks the advantage of Audio CDs is that they can be played in any CD player If you do not have CD Burning software visit http www nextup com partners html to try one If you have Windows XP Windows media player has built in burning capabilities One important note about creating audio CDs relates to the earlier discussion of Bit Sample Rates Audio CDs are 44kHz audio Speech engines have sample rates lower than this so somewhere in the process
8. so that you may break up each chapter into its own file The new chapter text files are placed in the specified output directory and can then be imported into TextAloud via File gt Open or converted with the Batch File Converter Actions and options on the File Splitter Utility are Input File Path This is the large file you would like to split Any txt rtf html doc or pdf file can be specified e Output File Directory This is where you d like TextAloud to place the new smaller text files that will be created 63 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 64 Base Output Filename Each new chapter file to be created will be have a given base name plus a sequence number So for example if you put Base Output Name of MyBook and the file splitter creates 3 files the new files will be named MyBook001 txt MyBook002 txt and MyBook003 txt Starting Output File Sequence Number This is the number to start the sequencing with As above with this set to 1 the first file would be called MyBook001 txt If you had specified 5 as the starting number the first file would be called MyBook005 txt Split Method The file splitter has two different methods of splitting files When By Output Target Size is selected each output file will be the same size and contain the same amount of text For example if you put 5K for the Target Output File Size then the first 5Kbytes of the input file will go to MyBook001 txt and
9. you ll see the list of audio files and by double clicking one of the audio files it will play within your default audio player Emailing Audio Files You may wish to attach audio files to emails you send friends and co workers When doing this it is generally important to keep audio files small by using WMA or MP3 formats Details of how to attach and audio file to an email vary depending on what email program or site you use Generally when composing a new email there will be a menu item or toolbar icon often shown as a paper clip to attach a file to the email Click this item and browse to the file output directory and select the file you wish to include When the email is received the reader can click the attachment to hear the audio file in their default audio player Alternatively with some email programs you can open Windows explorer and locate the audio file of interest right click that file and choose Send To gt Mail Recipient to launch a new message with the audio file automatically attached 57 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 58 Using in Portable Audio Players MP3 Players The most popular use of TextAloud created audio files is to listen to them away from the computer on portable audio players such as iPods or other MP3 players If you do not yet have a portable player these range in price from 75 to several hundred dollars TextAloud created audio files will work in any portable player supporting the MP3 format In
10. 52 Audio File Properties All audio files which are digital representations of analog signals have several properties that may be of interest depending on how you use the audio files The key properties we ll discuss are Stereo vs Mono All speech engines create mono audio files When encoding to some audio formats you may be given the option to encode to Stereo files This is normally not recommended since it increases the size of the file while not really changing the sound or fidelity of the file at all However depending on the hardware or software you use the audio files in there are rare cases where Stereo must be specified For example there are some CD burning products that can ONLY work with Stereo MP3 files although this is rare Sample Rate Each voice has a native sample rate which means that the audio samples used to create the voice were sampled at a given rate These rates range from 8kHz to 22kHz Voices are available as follows e 8 kHz 8kHz Microsoft voices 8kHz AT amp T voices 8kHz Neospeech voices e 11kHz L amp H Free Voices e 16kHz Cepstral 16kHz AT amp T 16kHz Neospeech voices e 22kHz Normal Microsoft Mary Mike and Sam These sample rates do not necessarily indicate a higher quality sound however 16kHz AT amp T voices do sound better than 8kHz AT amp T Voices But 16kHz AT amp T voices sound much better than 22kHz Microsoft voices so higher sample rates do not necessarily mean better so
11. Adjustments There are two separate volume adjustments available within TextAloud Each voice has a volume setting This volume affects the loudness of the voice whether used aloud or to audio file and can be thought of somewhat as a relative volume setting where you are specifying a volume relative to other voice volumes This is the volume setting discussed in the Reviewing Available Voices section Additionally when speaking aloud the volume level you will hear is affected by e Volume of the volume adjustment on your speakers e Master Volume setting on the Windows mixer e WAVE Volume setting on the Windows mixer The Windows Mixer is the volume control for Windows You can open this dialog typically by double clicking the speaker icon in the Windows system tray near the clock on the start bar If you have problems with volume being too low or hearing no sound at all be sure to turn up these volumes and make sure none of the Mute checkboxes are checked On the main TextAloud window there is a volume control This corresponds to the WAVE Volume setting on the Windows mixer and gives you some immediate control over the system volume 40 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 41 Inserting Pauses into Text Each voice engine has its own characteristics on how long it pauses for certain types of punctuations between sentences and between paragraphs There are times when you would like to have a slightly longer pause at certain spots in pla
12. Note that you may also edit the Pitch Speed and Volume for a voice by right clicking in the text area of TextAloud and choosing Edit Voice The main use of this window is to enable only those voices you wish to use disabling all other voices 37 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 38 Automatic Voice Selection Settings When TextAloud creates a new article a voice is automatically assigned to that article This is the voice shown on the Voice Dropdown when the article is selected in the main TextAloud window and is the voice that will be used to speak the article unless it is manually changed via that Voice Dropdown Via Article Options at Options gt TextAloud Options gt Article Options you can set how you want voices to be selected and assigned to new articles The options here are e Default The voice you ve selected as the Default voice will be automatically assigned to new articles e Random A random voice from the pool of enabled voices will be selected and assigned to new articles e Round Robin Voices will be selected and assigned to new articles sequentially For example if you had Mary Crystal and Kate enabled and you imported 6 new articles voices might be assigned in this order Mary Crystal Kate Mary Crystal Kate As noted these settings are for the voice assignment when articles are created You can change the actual voice to be used at any time manually using the Voice Dropdown 38 TEXTALOU
13. Windows volume settings for most audio programs lt Speak gt Button Click this button to have the current article spoken aloud This has the same action as clicking Speak gt Speak Current Article lt Speak To File gt Button Click this button to create an audio file from the currently selected article lt Delete gt Button Deletes the current article Same action as Edit gt Delete Selected Article Text Scrollbar If the current article has more text than can be shown within the TextAloud window this scrollbar will appear and can be used to navigate up and down the text of the article Multi Article Scrollbar When TextAloud has more than one article use this scrollbar to navigate to different articles This is useful to move to the next or previous article or a quick method to the first or last To move to a particular article using the Article List Dropdown is easier since you can identify the articles by title 19 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 20 6 0 Floating Toolbar TextAloud includes a smaller floating toolbar which can be used to manage speaking when the main TextAloud window is not shown I TextAloud MP3 Toolbar Rs To File You can adjust the size of the icons as well as remove captions via Options gt TextAloud Options gt Miscellaneous There are also settings there to dictate when the floating toolbar will be displayed and whether the toolbar should always stay on top of other windows
14. additional text formatting HTML Files html HTML files are the files that make up web pages If you save an HTML file locally for example using File gt Save As within Internet Explorer TextAloud can import that file as an article Microsoft Word Files doc These are documents from the most popular word processor Adobe Acrobat Files pdf Popular publishing file format One item to note with Adobe Acrobat files is that some PDF files have been copy protected by the author preventing other programs including TextAloud from extracting text For documents like these a specialized converter may be required such as SolidPDF listed at http www nextup com partners html 22 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 23 By default TextAloud has a document size limit on how much text will be displayed within the TextAloud window If you open a very large document you may see text within the TextAloud window noting that the document was too large to import directly into TextAloud and that it will be referenced in the external file While this message appears to be an error message this is simply a possibly over cautious protection included in TextAloud to prevent huge documents from taking too much of Windows resources The document will still be spoken as other articles but text will not be highlighted within the TextAloud window This protection mechanism is primarily included within TextAloud to protect older Windows systems
15. area and choose Speak from Cursor Aloud to start speaking at the current cursor location instead of from the start So if you want to skip some portion of text click to the spot where you want to start speaking and then choose Speak From Cursor Aloud e You may also speak only a portion of an article Highlight a portion of text within the current article then choose Speak gt Speak Selected Text Aloud or right click and choose Speak Selected Text Aloud 32 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 33 Actions and Navigation during Speaking While TextAloud is actively speaking aloud there are several actions available e Stop O O O O To stop speaking click Speak gt Stop on the main menu The lt Stop gt toolbar icon The lt Stop gt icon on the floating toolbar Choosing Stop on the menu displayed by right clicking on the TextAloud System Tray Icon e Pause Resume To pause speaking and keep cursor in place to resume at the same spot click O o o O Speak gt Pause on the main menu The lt Pause gt toolbar icon The lt Pause gt icon on the floating toolbar Choosing Pause on the menu displayed by right clicking on the TextAloud System Tray Icon NOTE Once speaking has been paused the Pause items above will change to Resume Click any of those to resume speaking 33 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 34 Skip to Next Article While in Multi Article Mode and Speaking All Articles you can skip the c
16. files is to verify settings related to audio files found at Options gt Voice And File Options gt File Options File types and bit rate settings are detailed above The File Output Directory is where you would like the audio files to be placed once created Click the Browse button to locate or create a directory to place the audio files in After files are created you can open Windows explorer to that directory to see and play audio files The Write To File Speed specifies how quickly TextAloud should try to create the audio files Choosing 1x means that TextAloud will create the audio files slowly at the same speed it would take to speak the file aloud Many voices and computers are capable of creating audio files much faster than this but the faster the setting the greater amount of your CPU power TextAloud will consumer during file creation This could slow your computer if you are also doing other work while creating audio files We recommend a setting of around 10x then if things perform well you can make this higher Some voices such as AT amp T Natural Voices will likely never reach speed over 10X but voices with a smaller footprint such as Cepstral voices can create audio files as fast as 50x NOTE Write to file speed is ignored when using SAPI5 and files are created as fast as possible 54 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 55 Next verify the titles of articles you will be converting to audio files are the names you want These Artic
17. keys 74 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 75 If you choose Options gt Shortcut Setup the TextAloud Shortcuts window is shown TextAloud Shortcuts Menu Selection Shortcut File Open Ctrl 0 New Article Ctri N Text File Audio File Speak Floppy Text File Ctrl Alt O Append Current Article Ctrl Alteyw Edit File Splitter Utility Batch File Converter Hear AT amp T Natural Voices Sample Tell a Friend Exit Text loud Edit Undo Ctrl Z Redo Shift Ctrl Z Cut Ctrl lt Ok Cancel The table in this window shows each menu item and its shortcut if one is defined By selecting an item and clicking Edit you can create or modify the shortcut defined for that item When you click Edit a window is displayed showing the current shortcut By actually pressing the desired shortcut TextAloud will automatically update the displayed shortcut key Then simply click OK to save the change When you return to the TextAloud main window the menu shortcuts will have been updated Customizing Fonts and Colors of Text TextAloud allows users to change the font and colors used to display article text and for text highlighting This can be important for users with low eyesight who may need larger text or may have better vision with certain color combinations These customizations can be done via Options gt Article Font Text Size on the main menu Traditional font changes you may be familiar with through word processing programs including ch
18. skills and preferences judging the quality of speech is a very personal and subjective process TextAloud provides dozens of features and tools to help you customize the speech in order to customize and improve speech Voice Selection As discussed in the About Text To Speech Voices section TextAloud supports a wide variety of voices Review that section and mentioned voices to insure the voices you have on your computers are the voices that sound best to you TextAloud provides flexible options for selecting voices Some users find a single voice they enjoy most and want each article to be spoken by that voice Some users find that having each article spoken with a different voice makes the process less monotonous much like when listening to a news cast anchors take turns reading stories 35 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 36 Reviewing Available Voices The first step in setting up your voice preferences is reviewing available voices By going to Options gt Voice and File Options you ll see all available voices Voices and File Options Engines Voices File Options SAPI Version Use SAPI5 only s PATAT Natural Voices 1 4 AT amp T Audrey16 UK English Q AT amp T Crystall6 v AT amp T Laureni6 v AT amp T Mike16 wv AT amp T Rosal6 Spanish wv Cepstral Microsoft v Voiceware OK Cancel SAPI Version NOTE As discussed in other sections of this document some features of TextAloud are available only with SAPI5 Voi
19. stop highlight the mispronounced word then right click and choose Pronunciation Editor from the popup menu This will open the basic editor and preload the mispronounced word into the Word field to speed definition of the new edit TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 45 Changing Pronunciation of Substrings By default entries in the Basic Pronunciation Editor are applied only when text in the Word field actually occurs on a word boundary Substitutions are not performed on text that appears as a substring of another word For example entering an alternative pronunciation for the word day changes the pronunciation of day everywhere it appears as a word but not in words like today yesterday etc To change the substitution of words that appear as substrings use the amp character The placement of the amp determines whether leading characters trailing characters or both should allow substitutions In the table below a Yes in the column indicates that a Basic Pronunciation Editor substitution will be performed for the word Word Field of Pronunciation Editor Word In Text board amp board board amp amp board amp board Yes Yes Yes Yes snowboard Yes Yes boarding Yes Yes snowboarding Yes Pattern Matching with Masks and Regular Expressions Masks and Regular Expressions allow you to perform more complex filtering and pronunciation changes from the Basic Pronunciation Editor Instead of specifying pronunciations for individual
20. the Proofread HotKey a popup window will show you the text if you see a mistake simply click on the window and speaking will stop and you will be returned to the program you are writing in to make corrections Voice NeoSpeech Kate 16k bad Speed 0 Text from the highlighted paragraph will immediately begin speaking as words are highlighted You can customize the size of the window voice and speed used as well as Font and Colors used for the text These settings will be remembered for future use Most users will increase speed to slightly faster than normal listening since this is text they are already familiar with If while listening and watching the text you find a mistake simply click anywhere within the text area of this window and speaking will stop and the window disappears returning you to your word processor Correct the mistake you found and repeat the process If no mistake is found when the paragraph is complete the window disappears and you are ready to repeat the process with the next paragraph until the document is completed This process will greatly cut down on mistakes in your writing TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 69 16 0 Advanced Features Changing TextAloud Appearance through Skins Skins is a term popularized by music related programs such as WinAmp The idea behind skins is that you can drastically change the appearance of a program by applying a new skin to the application changing colors and in some
21. to keep it available for use Choices for when the toolbar is displayed are e On Request Toolbar is displayed only when TextAloud is minimized and you right click the TextAloud system tray icon and then choose Show Toolbar from the menu e When Minimized Toolbar is displayed anytime TextAloud is minimized e When Minimized and Reading Starts Only shown if speaking while TextAloud is minimized While use of the floating toolbar isn t vital for TextAloud use some users find it very helpful to manage playback of articles while leaving most of your desktop free for other work TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 21 7 0 Running in System Tray The Windows system tray is the area on the Windows start bar near the system clock Programs that are running frequently place an icon here to provide you quick access to the program and its functions Anytime TextAloud is running it places a small TextAloud icon in the system tray recognizable as a red T and a speaker icon You can double click this icon at any time to bring the TextAloud main window open and to the top of other windows By right clicking this icon a TextAloud menu will open providing access to several functions including Start Pause Stop Speaking TextAloud Options Under this entry is a convenient choice to turn on and off clipboard watching Exiting TextAloud Showing the Floating Toolbar Via Options gt TextAloud Options gt Miscellaneous there are two s
22. watching is often too intrusive for some users who often use the Windows clipboard when performing tasks unrelated to TextAloud For these users we recommend that clipboard watching be turned off and instead HotKeys be used for dealing with text from other programs in TextAloud HotKeys will be detailed in a later section Manual Typing or Pasting In addition to the more automatic methods of creating new articles in TextAloud you may also manually create articles To do this click File gt New Article on the main menu This will create a blank article A default title will be generated but can be overwritten in the Title edit box Next within the Text Area you can manually type in contents of the article In addition you can use Cut Copy and Paste within this area similar to the way you can within any text editing program You can even save the text you create as an external text file by choosing File gt Save Article As gt Text File 30 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 31 Import New HotKey HotKey s are keyboard combinations that you can setup via Options gt HotKey Setup A HotKey is somewhat like a global shortcut key As long as TextAloud is running even if the TextAloud window isn t displayed but is minimized TextAloud will watch for this keyboard sequence and can then take an action More details on all of TextAloud s HotKey functionality is detailed in the HotKey Reference section but the Import New HotKey in particular
23. word currently being spoken will be highlighted in this area assuming word highlighting is turned on under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Miscellaneous You may edit text in this area and several actions are available on a popup menu when you right click in this area Status Bar The status bar at the bottom of the window will often provide helpful status information such as the number of current articles or progress indicators during speaking Pitch Slider This area contains a slider to allow easy adjustment of the pitch for the current voice Note that some voices do not support pitch adjustments as shown in the figure above Changing a value here will adjust the default pitch for the current voice so the new value will be used anytime that voice is selected 18 10 11 12 13 14 15 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 19 Speed Slider Use this slider to speed up or slow down speaking when using the current voice All voices support speed adjustments You will notice the ranges shown will vary based on voice and SAPI version they support Changing a value here will adjust the default speed for the current voice Volume Slider The volume slider controls the WAVE volume for the Windows mixer This is the same volume that is shown if you bring up the Windows mixer by double clicking the speaker icon in the system tray area near the clock on the Windows start bar Changes here are not voice specific but change
24. words or substrings you can specify patterns to search for and build pronunciations based on sub expressions in the matching strings If you re not familiar with the term Regular Expressions are a pattern matching language used for searching and parsing text TextAloud help will not get into the detailed syntax of using Regular Expressions so if you ve never seen them before you will need to look at some reference material There are plenty of references available on the web you can get started by visiting http www regular expressions info Although not as powerful as Regular Expressions Masks provide similar capability and are easier to learn and use A Mask or Regular Expression is added to the Basic Pronunciation Editor by placing one of the following into the Word field re regular expression mask mask A string in the Word field beginning with re or mask indicates the beginning of a regular expression or mask The trailing characters are required to terminate the string The following characters may be used to construct a Mask Mask Character Description 45 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 46 Matches any digit 0 thru 9 Matches any alpha character a thru z and A thru Z Matches any alpha numeric character a thru z A thru Z and 0 thru 9 Matches any character wildcard _ underscore Matches any word boundary character spaces and punctuation In the Pronunciatio
25. 64 Toolbar 16 18 19 58 68 V Voice Assignment 13 Voice Selection 13 33 36 55 59 Voice Switching 48 volume 6 13 17 35 38 78 W wav 5 49 53 Windows clipboard 22 WMA 5 49 X XML 9
26. D 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 39 Speed and Pitch adjustments NOTE discussions related to Pitch do not apply to AT amp T Natural Voices which do not support Pitch adjustments TextAloud allows you to adjust the speed and pitch of speaking On the main TextAloud window sliders are provided to adjust both speed and pitch Move the pitch indicator to the right to increase pitch make the voice sound higher or to the left to decrease pitch make the voice sound lower With some voices enough adjustment may be available to even change the gender sound of the voice or raise it enough to make a voice sound like a child The amount of adjustment supported varies by each voice so experiment with these Speed can also be increased or decreased When first starting to use TextAloud some users find the voices more easily understood by slowing down the rate of speech slightly Then as you grow accustomed to the voices you can increase the speed to absorb information more quickly These adjustments may be made while speaking is taking place You ll likely notice a small pause after adjustments while TextAloud readies the voices for the new settings TextAloud automatically saves speed and pitch settings for each voice in the Windows registry This means that when using a particular voice if you change these settings these new settings are saved and will be in effect again the next time the voice is used 39 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 40 Volume
27. NEXTUP TECHNOLOGIES TextAloud 2 0 Users Manual TextAloud 2 0 Users Manual NextUp Technologies LLC NextUp com 2668 Lewisville Clemmons Rd Clemmons NC 27012 Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 0 Introduction 2 0 Quick Start Guide Installing TextAloud Speaking the First Time Four Ways to Load Text Internet Explorer Plug In Optional Premium Voices Creating Audio Files What s New in TextAloud 2 0 3 0 About Text To Speech Voices SAPI Speech Application Interface Voice Sample Rates Languages Available Voices Improving Speech 4 0 Single vs Multi Article Mode Single Article Mode Multi Article Mode 5 0 TextAloud Main Window Overview 6 0 Floating Toolbar 7 0 Running in System Tray 8 0 Bringing Text into TextAloud Opening Documents Directly Clipboard Watching About the Windows Clipboard ISSN A nw HR QD O N N m N ni ni w SON BAA D Un D NY TextAloud s Automatic Clipboard Watching Common Clipboard Watching Setups Manual Typing or Pasting Import New HotKey Internet Explorer Plug In 9 0 Speaking Aloud Starting Speaking Actions and Navigation during Speaking 10 0 Customizing Speech Voice Selection Reviewing Available Voices Automatic Voice Selection Settings Speed and Pitch adjustments Volume Adjustments Inserting Pauses into Text Non Alpha Filtering Pronunciation Editor Basic Editor Changing Pronunciation of Substrings Pattern Matching wit
28. NextUP com support can provide you with instructions to turn off this limit so contact support nextup com if interested 23 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 24 Clipboard Watching About the Windows Clipboard Microsoft Windows has a feature called the Windows clipboard This is a global shared memory area where text or other objects can be copied to then used in other programs You ve likely used this even if you didn t realize it Copying text to the Windows clipboard can be done from within most programs that allow viewing of text Copying text to the Windows clipboard involves first highlighting the text of interest then performing the actual copy to the Windows clipboard Highlighting text is accomplished by any of the following e Holding left mouse button down while moving mouse over the text of interest then releasing mouse button once selection has been highlighted e Within programs that allow text editing by holding down the Shift button while using arrow keys to move the character cursor e By choosing Edit gt Select All on the main menu of programs that offer this option Once selected text is highlighted it can be copied to the Windows clipboard by one of the following methods e Right Clicking and choosing Copy from the popup menu within programs that offer this option e Choosing Edit gt Copy from the main menu of programs that offer this option e Holding down the Control Key on your keyboard then pressing C
29. OUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 32 9 0 Speaking Aloud Starting Speaking TextAloud offers several methods to start speaking To start listening to the current article click Speak gt Speak Current Article or click the lt Speak gt button on the right side of the window just above the lt Speak To File gt button If in Single Article Mode clicking the lt Speak gt toolbar button will have this same effect If in Multi Article Mode you can start listening to all articles by clicking Speak gt All Articles Aloud or clicking the lt Speak gt toolbar button TextAloud will switch to the first article and begin speaking After an article has completed it will optionally be deleted automatically based on settings under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Article Options and then speaking will continue with the next article in your article list until all articles have been spoken If Word Highlighting is turned on as you hear a word spoken it will be highlighted within the text area Word highlighting can be enabled disabled via Options gt TextAloud Options gt Miscellaneous You ll also notice status updates shown on the TextAloud Status Bar showing information about voice initialization progress through the article lists as well as progress indicating completion for the current article In addition to reading full article text from the beginning additional options are available e Speak gt Speak From Cursor Aloud or right click in the text
30. This text will not be spoken but is used internally by TextAloud to manage bookmarks Be careful to not change this text Deleting this text will delete the bookmark After one or more bookmarks are created you can jump to that spot in the text at any time even while TextAloud is speaking by choosing Edit gt Go To Bookmark gt bookmark name or by right clicking in the text area and choosing Go To Bookmark 71 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 72 HotKey Reference TextAloud HotKeys are global key combinations that can perform TextAloud actions anytime TextAloud is running regardless of whether the TextAloud window is displayed or not Because these key combinations are global meaning available throughout Windows regardless of what program you are working in it is important that you choose somewhat obscure key combinations to insure they work correctly This is because the keys you choose must not already have special meaning within the other programs you work in or that may be running on your computer These key combinations are combinations of Control Alt and Shift keys plus some other key on your keyboard In general we recommend that the combinations include all three of these to insure other programs do not use them Here is an example using the Stop HotKey that will demonstrate the usage of global HotKeys Under Options gt HotKey Setup you d define the Stop HotKey to be Control Alt Shift Q You would do this by choosing Q on the d
31. able for use within TextAloud Microsoft Voices Originally licensed by Microsoft from Lernout amp Hauspie L amp H Mary Mike and Sam are available free for download at the bottom of http www nextup com TextAloud SpeechEngine voices html While these voices are older and do not have a natural sound they do a decent job with most text and are easily understood They are available in English only and take up less than 2mb per voice and are available in SAPI4 or SAPI5 versions L amp H Voices These voices are of similar quality to the Microsoft voices and are available for download at the bottom of http www nextup com TextAloud SpeechEngine voices html They take up less than 2mb per voice support only SAPI4 and are available in the following languages o American English o British English o Dutch o French o German o Italian o Portuguese o Spanish 13 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 14 O AT amp T Natural Voices These are among the most natural sounding voices around You can hear samples of AT amp T voices at http www nextup com attnv html and play with an interactive demo at http www nextup com nvdemo html These voices are available for purchase at NextUp com They take up nearly 600mb per voice support both SAPI4 and SAPI5 and are available in the following languages o American English o British English o American English Indian Accent o German o Latin American Spanish o French
32. addition some players will also support WMA files To view a few of the players we have tested visit http www nextup com TextAloud mp3players html Each portable mp3 player has its own method for moving audio files from your computer to the player TextAloud will not automatically do this for you Some players will show up as a new disk drive for example E when connected to the computer Others may have their own transfer software or use programs like Windows media player to handle the transfer Read the documentation that came with the player to understand how to transfer audio files In general transferring TextAloud created audio files to a portable player will be identical to transferring music files to it When creating MP3 files TextAloud will place additional information into the file These info fields are called ID3 Tags For music files they are typically used to specify Song title Artist Genre etc Many portable players will display this information For TextAloud created files the article title will be displayed along with some other information such as the voice used 58 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 59 Burning files to CD Audio files may also be burned to CD to use portably There are two distinct types of CDs you may create MP3 CD There are specialized CD players both portable and for automobiles which have the capability to play MP3 files directly These CD Players will specifically mention MP3 files in their
33. ality can be lost or some noise added Wave files can also be used to create other file types not supported by TextAloud using external audio file converters External converters are available to create other audio file types such as RealMedia files or OGG Vorbis files e MP3 is a popular audio file format MP3 files made popular in the downloadable music explosion of the last decade are compressed files sometimes as little as 100 the size of uncompressed Wave files MP3 files are most often used with TextAloud because of this size advantage and because of the huge number of inexpensive portable audio devices that support playback of MP3 files For a short list of NextUp com recommended MP3 players visit http www nextup com TextAloud mp3players html e WMA or Windows Media Audio is a Microsoft audio file format meant to compete with MP3 Windows Media Files can be slightly smaller than MP3 files and may have a slight sound quality advantage over MP3 TextAloud supports direct creation of WMA files although you may need to download an additional free piece of software from http www nextup com WMA html Some portable players are now on the market that support WMA files as well as Windows media player support on PocketPC PDA devices The type of file you want TextAloud to create when creating audio files instead of speaking aloud is specified under Options gt Voice and File Options gt File Options 51 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _
34. ally removed after spoken 16 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 17 5 0 TextAloud Main Window Overview The TextAloud main window is depicted below IS TextAloud DER Ele Edit View Options Speak Audio Help Help lal D B T amp e ests Article List TextAloud 2 0 New Features Here 1 1 Pitch Voiceyges not supportipitch adjustment Speak itle Text loud 2 0 New Features Here Speed 0 Speak To File 1 2 oice jatar Crystall6 bd Volume Delete TextAloud 2 0 New Features La Here is a quick look at the new features in TextAloud 2 0 Voice Pitch Change on main window Support for opening more file types 14 TextAloud 1 x would only open txt files from File gt Open TextAloud 2 0 can now directly open text files txt Rich Text Files rtf Microsoft Word Files doc local HTML Files and local PDF Files pdf 15 Batch File Conversion Available under File gt Batch File Converter this utility makes it simple to convert a large number of files containing text to audio files Proofreading Hotkey 16 articles Numbers on the picture annotate key areas detailed as follows 1 TextAloud Main Menu Provides menu items to all functions in TextAloud Note that most menu items have shortcut keys and using Options gt Shortcut Setup allows you to customize those keyboard shortcuts 17 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 18 TextAloud Toolbar These icons provide quick access to commonly u
35. anced phoneme editor you must switch TextAloud to use SAPIS Only This is done via Options gt Voice and File Options gt Engines Voices by setting SAPI Version to SAPI5 Only After doing this when you choose Options gt Pronunciation Editor there will be the Basic Editor as previously discussed but there will also be an additional TAB available labeled Advanced Clicking this Advanced TAB will display the Advanced Pronunciation Editor as shown below Pronunciation Editor Basic Editing Advanced Editing E Advanced Pronunciation Editing with Phonemes US English Use this panel for precise control over how words are pronounced by speech engines To enter a pronuncistion sound it out using the strings in the Phoneme Table below Phoneme strings in the pronunciation must be seperated by spaces Either enter the strings manually in the Pronunciation Field or double click rows in the Phoneme table For example the word hello is pronounced as h eh ow Pronunciation edits perormed on this panel are handled at the Speech Engine level and currently supported by the AT amp T Natural Voices Phoneme _ Sounds Like A syllable boundary hyphen Sentence terminator fexclam word boundary Sertence termnator comma Sentence terminator penod Sentence termnator questio w soft Sience underscore Primary Stress Secondary Shess AT amp T Crystal father cat cut wait As with the Basic editor the list on
36. anging the font the size and whether Bold Underlined or Italic are available In addition you can change the colors used for the text background color of text as well as foreground and background color used with word highlighting 75 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 76 Command Line Usage The standard version of TextAloud does not support command line arguments However we do offer a specialized command line tool for those needing simple external access to TextAloud type functionality For more information on the command line version of TextAloud visit http www nextup com cl html TextAloud API We frequently receive requests for programming access to TextAloud We have created an API for TextAloud allowing programmers to access nearly all TextAloud features and functions via a COM Automation Server This provides access to many programming languages including Delphi VC VB and VBScript among others For more information on this see http www nextup com api html 76 TEXTALOUD 17 0 Licensing Information TextAloud License Agreement The standard TextAloud license agreement is shown below Please note that voices used may have their own unique license agreements which must be honored See the following section for more information on this 2 0 USERS MANUAL 77 TextAloud Copyright 2004 by NextUp com Inc E Mail support NextUp com Web http www nextup co
37. atus bar at the bottom of the window has two sections The left side reminds you whether TextAloud is in Single or Multi Article mode The right side of the panel where 2 is displayed in this example is a counter that counts down the number of seconds before the window will close automatically and the default action will be taken Common Clipboard Watching Setups For most users one of two clipboard setups will be most commonly used For users who use Single Article Mode and want the clipboard typically spoken use Clipboard Watching On Ignore less than 100 characters Prompting Off Default Action of New Automatically Speak under Article Options checked This will cause TextAloud to automatically speak any text over 100 characters that is copied to the clipboard 29 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 30 For users who typically use TextAloud to clip articles that they will listen to after compiling several articles use e Clipboard Watching On e Ignore less than 200 characters e Prompting On e Default Action of Cancel With these settings when you copy more than 200 characters TextAloud will give you the option to import as new or append or to cancel and do nothing with the text Note that when doing other work that may use the clipboard often you can easily turn of clipboard watching by right clicking the TextAloud system tray icon choosing Options and unchecking Watch Clipboard It is also important to note that clipboard
38. ave additional voices and they do not seem to work properly in TextAloud email us at support nextup com for assistance NOTE Anytime you install a new voice it will not immediately be available within TextAloud You must first fully exit TextAloud via File gt Exit then restart the program before new voices will be displayed A voice is assigned to each article added to TextAloud This voice can be changed via the Voice Dropdown list on the main window Which voice is assigned is controlled by the settings for Voice Selection under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Article Options Voice Assignment can be set to e Default The default voice as selected under Options gt Voice and File Options is used e Random A random voice is selected from the enable voices Voices can be enabled and disabled under Options gt Voice and File Options e Round Robin Voices are rotated sequentially based on enabled voices Improving Speech Judging the quality of TTS Voices is very subjective What sounds good to one user may not be intelligible to another TextAloud has many features to allow you to improve the sound The most important thing you can do is upgrade to one or more of the higher quality voices listed above Additionally TextAloud easily allows you to adjust the speed pitch and volume on voices with the sliders on the main window NOTE AT amp T Natural Voices do not support pitch adjustments Most users as they become accusto
39. cases shapes of the windows and graphical elements TextAloud has the ability to support a varied set of skins to change the look of the program These skins primarily change the color applied to non text areas within TextAloud and the shape of the outer boundaries of the windows To change the appearance of TextAloud click View gt Skins on the main menu Select one of the included skins and then click Test to see the changes it would apply Additional skins are available for download at http www nextup com skins html NOTE When sight impaired users are using TextAloud in combination with a screen reader the Skins setting should be left to None Some skins can interfere with the correct operation of screen readers TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 70 Customizing Toolbars TextAloud includes two toolbars These are on the Main Window just below the main menu and the floating toolbar There are 3 options for the look of these toolbars e Large Icons with Captions e Large Icons e Small Icons The default setting for both is Large Icons with Captions This is the suggested setting while you are first learning TextAloud After learning the functions of each icon feel free to change to remove captions or go to small icons decrease the size of the TextAloud window You may also choose to completely hide the main toolbar To customize the Main Window Toolbar choose View gt Toolbar on the main menu Here you will have the option to Hide Show th
40. ce might refer to a girl named Jan but the speech engine may pronounce it January To disable this behavior you create a new entry for the word Jan and have it pronounced as Jann This substitution tricks the voice engine into saying the word as you d like it pronounced rather than trying to expand an abbreviation Another example is the term NextUp com Some voices are unable to speak this correctly seeing NextUp as one work and running it together seeing the period as the end of a sentence and unsure what to do with com Using the basic editor we can define a better pronunciation by defining NextUp com to be spoken as next up dot com 42 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 43 The Basic Editor is shown below Pronunciation Editor Basic Editing Advanced Editing Pronounce As Basic Pronunciation Editing Use this panel for making simple pronunciation corrections This is useful when simply changing the spelling of words or separating syllables corrects a word s pronunciation For example you might pronounce TextAloud as Text Aloud or MSFT as Microsoft Pronunciations edits performed on this panel affect all installed voices Word NextUp com Pronunciation next up dot com I Case Sensitive Test Voice Cepstral Emily id Test Done Defined Words List On the left side of the window the list of words you have defined in the editor is a two column list with co
41. ces while some voices are only available under SAPI4 The SAPI Version dropdown at the top of this window selects whether you use SAPI4 SAPI5 or Both types of voices Normally this selection should be set to Both unless you want to use functions specified for SAPI 5 Only 36 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 37 From this Engines Voices window you will see folders listed for each voice company By expanding the folder as the AT amp T folder is expanded above you ll see each available voice By clicking a voice you will have options to e Disable Enable Enabling a voice makes it available for use within TextAloud e Set Default Sets a voice as the default voice If your voice selection settings under Article Options is set for Default this voice will always be used Additionally the Default voice is always used for the Speak HotKey detailed in the HotKey Reference section e Test plays a test message using the voice e Reset Defaults Resets Pitch Speed and Volume sliders to their default values for a given voice e Pitch Adjusts the pitch of the voice note that AT amp T Natural Voices do not support pitch adjustments e Speed Adjusts the speed at which the voice speaks e Volume Adjusts the volume of this voice Note that this volume is different than the Windows mixer volume slider available on the TextAloud main window This volume setting also affects volume of the voice when creating audio files
42. e toolbar as well as select size and caption setting as mentioned above To customize the floating toolbar choose Options gt TextAloud Options gt Miscellaneous and change the settings e Show Floating Toolbar You can set when or if the floating toolbar should be displayed e Floating Toolbar Style Same options as with the main toolbar related to size and captions e Floating Toolbar Always On Top Determines whether the floating toolbar should remain above other windows and visible when displayed 70 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 71 Bookmarks To assist when working in longer articles TextAloud allows you to set bookmarks within the text then easily return to those bookmarks using menu commands This can help when jumping back and forth between different sections or will allow you to mark the spot in a long document where you stopped listening so that next time you come back to TextAloud you can jump to that spot and then do the Read From Cursor command To Create a bookmark within an article click to the spot in the article then select Edit gt Add Bookmark or right click in the text area and choose Add Bookmark on the popup menu You will be prompted for a name of the bookmark This name will be shown in menus so use something that will help you identify that spot in the text if using multiple bookmarks within a single article TextAloud will insert text into the article similar to Bookmark My Bookmark Name
43. elect files to be converted set details about the audio files in the fields provided and then click lt Convert gt A popup window will show progress of creating the audio files Fields and buttons on this window are e Add Files Button Opens a File gt Open style dialog and allows you to select txt rtf html doc and pdf files to add to the list of files to convert e Remove Selected If you add a file to the list that you decide not to convert select the file in the list and click this button e Remove All Clears the file list TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 57 e Convert Starts the batch conversion process creating an audio file from each of the files e Exit Cancels the batch conversion and closes the window e Output Directory The directory where created audio files should be placed Use the Browse button to select create directory e Audio File Format Select WAV MP3 or WMA e Audio Quality This is the Bit Sample Rate Setting for the audio file e Voice Selection Choices are o Select This means the voice specified in the Voice dropdown below will be used for all documents o Random Each document will be spoken with a randomly selected voice o Round Robin Enabled voices will be rotated Using Audio Files Once you ve created audio files with TextAloud they will be stored in the File Output Directory and will be available for use By opening Windows Explorer to that directory
44. enables almost any text to be listened to using your computer or portable audio devices By reading this manual completely you ll understand the power and features of TextAloud allowing you to fully take advantage of its capabilities This manual will reference command buttons and menu actions available with TextAloud When referencing menu commands the commands will be shown in bold using the convention File gt Exit for example This indicates you should select File on TextAloud s main menu then the Exit item on the sub menu that is displayed Whenever buttons are references the convention lt OK gt will be used In this case indicating you click the button labeled OK Also the term TTS will often be used as an abbreviation for Text To Speech In addition to this manual there are several other information sources available to you e http Awww nextup com Our site provides product information and purchase links as well as downloads of the latest version of TextAloud e support nextup com Email us at any time with any questions you have You ll find that we provide very quick and helpful responses to all email questions e http nextup com mailinglist html Signup for the NextUp com Monthly Newsletter as well as read back issues of our Newsletter We typically provide a tip of the month for getting more out of TextAloud along with any info about updates and changes to the product e http nextup com phpBB2 index p
45. er the text will be spoken by the default Windows voice You can change the selected default voice via the Speech icon in the Windows control panel It will support any SAPI5 voice including those sold by NextUp com Adobe Reader also has similar speech functionality but there are also other options A program called SolidPDF available at http www nextup com partners html has the ability to extract text from protected PDF files allowing you to import it into TextAloud There are other less popular formats of e books which may present challenges for extracting text If you run into a problem email us at support nextup com 65 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 66 14 0 Reading Scanned Text We often get questions about how users can take printed materials books or other documents that are not available in electronic versions and have those read by TextAloud TextAloud cannot directly read these items However there are products that can assist with this process The text must first be scanned into the computer using a scanner Then those images must be processed by software called Optical Character Recognition OCR to be converted to text files which TextAloud can then read NextUp com does not at this time sell software to manage this process but there are a few products available to accomplish this Some of these products may be available with the scanner you purchase or may need to be purchased separately TextBridge OCR ht
46. ettings related to running TextAloud in the system tray The checkbox Start TextAloud on Windows Login can be set to cause TextAloud to automatically start and run in the system tray when you login to Windows This will make sure it is always available which is important if you often use with Clipboard Watching or HotKeys from within other programs without interacting with the TextAloud main window first The checkbox TextAloud resides in System Tray when window closed When this is checked if you close TextAloud by clicking the X in the upper right corner of TextAloud the program will not exit but will simply close the main window and remain in the system tray If this choice is not checked clicking the X will cause TextAloud to completely exit 21 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 22 8 0 Bringing Text into TextAloud TextAloud offers a variety of methods for creating articles from various text sources Opening Documents Directly Using File gt Open on TextAloud s main menu you can directly open various file types The selected file will be imported into TextAloud as a new article You may also select multiple files if in Multi Article Mode to import multiple articles at one time The following file types can be directly opened Text Files txt Article s are created from one or more selected txt files Article Title will be the filename Rich Text Files 1tf These are more advanced text files that include some
47. from speech engine to audio CD the sample rate must be converted This conversion can introduce noise in the audio so you may find that the audio CD doesn t sound as good as the audio file did when first produced Experimentation with different settings and different burning software can often improve results If you need help email us at support nextup com 59 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 60 12 0 Internet Explorer Plug in Users often wish to listen to information found on web pages such as news stories To make this process easier TextAloud includes an Internet Explorer Plug In This adds a TextAloud toolbar available within TextAloud providing shortcuts to TextAloud functionality only a mouse click away within Internet Explorer abbreviated IE NOTE After first installing TextAloud before the Internet Explorer Plug In will be available you must reboot restart Windows To use the TextAloud Internet Explorer Plug In you must first display it within Internet Explorer To do this within Internet Explorer click View gt Toolbars gt TextAloud on the IE main menu The TextAloud toolbar will be displayed in the toolbar area of IE as depicted below NextUp com Text to Speech Software with AT amp T Natural File Edit View Favorites Tools Help Back 6 a A Search SF Favorites Me Address a http fn nesckup com TextAloud a E AT amp T Lauren16 Items in the toolbar and their functi
48. h Masks and Regular Expressions Advanced Phoneme Editor Voice Switching 11 0 Audio File Creation About Audio File Types Audio File Properties Stereo vs Mono Sample Rate Bit Rates Choosing Bit Sample Rate Setting Bit Sample Rates for WAVE Files Creating Audio Files Batch Audio File Conversion Using Audio Files Emailing Audio Files Using in Portable Audio Players MP3 Players Burning files to CD 12 0 Internet Explorer Plug In 13 0 Working with E Books and other Large Text Files File Splitter Utility Copy Protected E Books 14 0 Reading Scanned Text 15 0 Proofreading with TextAloud 16 0 Advanced Features Changing TextAloud Appearance through Skins Customizing Toolbars Bookmarks HotKey Reference Customizing Shortcut Keys Customizing Fonts and Colors of Text Command Line Usage TextAloud API 17 0 Licensing Information TextAloud License Agreement Voice Licensing and Allowed Usage Volume School and Site Licensing 18 0 Getting More Information and Help 19 0 Index 70 71 72 74 75 76 76 77 77 80 80 81 82 1 0 Introduction Welcome to the TextAloud 2 0 Users Reference Manual This document will help you get the most out of TextAloud TextAloud formerly called TextAloud MP3 2 0 is a powerful text to speech speech synthesis tool for computers running all versions of Windows 95 and later NOTE Some voices and functions may not be available on Windows 95 TextAloud
49. hat s New in TextAloud 2 0 If you are upgrading from a previous version of TextAloud here are some of the exciting new features in TextAloud 2 0 New easier to use interface Support for Skins to change TextAloud s window appearance Import of Word HTML and PDF files Customization of article fonts and highlighting colors for improved readability Change of voice speed pitch and volume on main window Improved support for screen readers used by sight impaired individuals Batch File Converter on the File Menu Support for changing voices within an article New Proofread HotKey for easy proofreading while writing documents or emails Bookmarks allow easy return to important sections of text Internet Explorer Plug In Search Replace added to Edit menu Ability to specify longer than normal pauses between sentences and paragraphs Creation of ID3 tags on MP3 files TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 9 3 0 About Text To Speech Voices TextAloud supports a variety of voices used to turn text into sound Voice technology continues to advance but they all on some level work based on the same principles A little background on how they work may be helpful in understanding how to choose voices and how to get the clearest possible speech All of the voices used by TextAloud are based on concatenative synthesis Concatenative voices are developed by taking actual human voice samples and slicing them up into tiny fragments of sound Then
50. hp Our User Forum is a gathering place for TextAloud enthusiasts Many of our existing users are more than willing to provide help regarding TextAloud and solving any problems or answer questions you may have e TextAloud includes a comprehensive help file available via Help gt Contents on the TextAloud main menu or by pressing F1 on your keyboard within most TextAloud windows TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 5 2 0 Quick Start Guide This section provides a very quick overview of basic TextAloud operation More details on everything discussed in this section are provided later in this manual Installing TextAloud TextAloud can be installed from purchased CD or via download from http nextup com TextAloud download html If installing from download visit the URL above and download the TextAloud installer exe file Running this file will guide you through installation If installing from CD click the TextAloud entry on the CD menu to install NOTE When installing a newer version of TextAloud onto a computer with TextAloud already installed you do not need to uninstall the older version first TextAloud will automatically be updated and previous settings retained Also if you have purchased TextAloud regardless of whether installing from CD or internet if you haven t previously you must enter the registration code you receive via email after purchasing into the opening screen of the program to disable the time limit of demo mode
51. ii 3 4 5 9 11 12 20 49 51 54 56 57 61 63 64 67 74 79 HTML 6 20 I ID3 tags 6 Import New HotKey 29 71 Installing 3 Internet Explorer 4 6 20 24 26 29 58 59 Italian 11 L L amp H Voices 9 11 license 75 78 M Masks 43 Microsoft voices 9 10 11 50 78 Microsoft Voices 11 51 Microsoft Word 20 66 Mono 50 mp3 5 53 56 MP3 ii 6 48 49 50 51 52 55 56 57 60 MS Word Documents 4 Multi Article 13 14 16 17 20 32 53 N NeoSpeech Voices 5 9 12 51 P pauses 6 39 pdf 4 20 54 61 PDF 6 20 63 Phonemes 46 47 pitch 6 7 9 13 16 35 37 PocketPC 48 49 portable audio device 5 Portable Audio Players 56 Portuguese 11 Pronunciation 9 40 41 42 43 44 45 47 proofread 65 66 Proofread HotKey 6 59 65 66 71 proofreading 6 65 78 R Regular Expressions 43 44 rich text files 4 S sample rate 9 10 50 51 52 57 SAPI 9 17 34 47 52 SAPI4 9 11 12 13 34 53 SAPI5 9 11 12 13 34 46 47 48 52 53 63 scanned 64 Search Replace 6 Shortcut 15 32 72 73 Single Article 14 25 27 30 size limit 21 Skins 6 67 Spanish 10 11 12 speed 6 13 16 17 35 37 42 52 66 72 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 83 83 Splitter 61 status bar 16 27 Stereo 50 51 system tray 17 18 19 28 38 59 70 T text files 4 20 61
52. ile 16kHz voices sound best on the computer either 8kHz or 16kHz will work fine when played within TextAloud However voices purchased for telephony usage should be 8kHz The other area where sample rates become important is when creating audio files for certain portable uses See Creating Audio Files later in this document for further discussion of this One thing to note when selecting voices is that sample rate alone doesn t define the quality of the voice For example Microsoft voices are 22kHz but don t sound nearly as good as 16kHz AT amp T voices But within a given engine higher Bitrates sound better 22kHz Microsoft voices sound better than the 8kHz Microsoft voices 16kHz AT amp T voices sound better than the 8kHz AT amp T Voices Languages Text To Speech Engines and Voices are available in a variety of languages In the following sections when we detail commonly available voices available languages will be listed Each voice has a native language TTS Voices and TextAloud will not do translation So for example if you have English text and use a Spanish voice you will not hear the Spanish version of that text Likewise voices do not do a good job of reading a language other than the one it was designed for Using English text with a French voice will not give you English with a French accent it will give you mostly gibberish 12 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 13 Available Voices Here are voices that are commonly avail
53. ing DOD SO tes Governmen FAR Use t to such res Software incl ned in paragraph 52 227 19 c licenses to export re Restricted Rights luding accompanying documentation on behalf provisions apply If Software is supplied to ftware is subject to Restricted Rights as the DOD Supplement to the Federal ACquisition Regulations 1 If Software is supplied to any unit or other than DOD the Government s rights in 2 of the Federal duplication reproduction or discl trictions or successor provisions losure by 78 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 79 OK Governing Law This Agreement is made under shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of North Carolina U S A excluding its choice of law provisions 10 Severability If any of the above provisions are held to be in violation of applicable law void or unenforceable in any jurisdiction then such provisions are herewith waived to th xtent necessary for the License to be otherwis nforceable in such jurisdiction However if in NextUp s opinion deletion of any provisions of the License by operation of this paragraph unreasonably compromises the rights or liabilities of NextUp or its licensors NextUp reserves the right to terminate the License and refund the fee paid by Licensee as Licensee s sole and exclusive remedy 11 Return Policy All sales are final 12 Integration This Agreement is th nt
54. ing MP3 or WMA file from a very large book is often much too large to be moved to portable player as a single file or too large to burn to audio CD To work around these problems you should break up very large books into smaller sections or chapters This corrects the potential problems above by allowing you to work with smaller files and eventually ending up with multiple audio files which can be managed more easily TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 63 File Splitter Utility TextAloud includes a text file splitter utility to assist in breaking up large text files into smaller more manageable chunks To access this utility choose File gt File Splitter Utility on the main menu This will display the File Splitter Utility Window File Splitter Utility Input File Path Settingssken My Documents nextup twain tramp 41 pdf Browse Output File Directory ST Ent Browse Base Output Filename twain tramp 41 Defaults to Input File Name Starting Output File Sequence Number 1 Split Method C By Output Target File Size By Specified Strings in Input File om Comma delimited list of strings chapter Preview Split Cancel In some ways the File Splitter Utility works external to TextAloud It allows you to take a single large document of any of the TextAloud supported file types and to easily split it into multiple smaller text files This splitting can be done by size so that each new section is the same size or by keyword
55. ire agreement between Licens and NextUp relating to Software and i supersedes all prior or contemporaneous oral or written communications proposals and representations with respect to its subject matter and ii prevails over any conflicting or additional terms of any quote order acknowledgment or similar communication between the parties during the term of this Agreement No modification to the Agreement will be binding unless in writing and signed by a duly authorized representative of each party ACKNOW EDGMENT BY USING ANY VERSION OF THIS SOFTWARE YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS ICENSE AND LIMITED WARRANTY UNDERSTAND IT AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY ITS TERMS AND CONDITIONS YOU ALSO AGREE THAT THE LIMITED WARRANTY IS THE COMPLETE AND EXCLUSIVE STATEMENT OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE PARTIES AND SUPERSEDE ALL PROPOSALS OR PRIOR AGREEMENTS ORAL OR WRITTEN AND ANY OTHER COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE PARTIES RELATING TO THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THE LIMITED WARRANTY Gl T T TU me Use of this software is permitted only to the extent reasonably required to determine whether to purchase the software After payment is made use of the Software is limited to use on only a si
56. l voice You can have multiple voice switches within an article This allows you to simulate multiple people speaking the text for special cases such as reading a script or simply creating variety within an article 11 0 Audio File Creation One of the most powerful and popular features of TextAloud is its ability to create audio files from text These spoken word audio files give you greater flexibility in listening to text by allowing you to use the audio elsewhere Some of the possible uses include e Sending audio files via email to friends or co workers e Burning on Audio CD to listen on your car CD player during your commute e Listening while exercising using portable MP3 player or iPod e Listen to converted text on PDA s such as PocketPCs e Creating audio files for use in presentations such as PowerPoint files e Creating audio versions of web pages for sight impaired users 50 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 51 About Audio File Types There are dozens of different audio file types in the world of computing TextAloud has built in support for the 3 most popular types WAVE MP3 and Windows Media Audio e Wave or wav files are standard Windows audio files These are typically uncompressed files meaning they take up significant disk space Because they are uncompressed they typically have the best and cleanest sound Other file types are compressed somewhat and depending on exact details of this compression some sound qu
57. le Title s will become the filenames For example if you have an article titled My E book then the audio file you end up with will be My Ebook mp3 or My Ebook wav Once these settings are verified you are ready to create audio files from TextAloud Articles You can create audio files by e Clicking the lt Speak To File gt button on the right side of the window below the lt Speak gt button This will create an audio file from the current article As with Speaking aloud if Automatic Delete is enabled the article will be deleted from TextAloud after the audio file is created e Clicking the lt To File gt toolbar icon on the main window toolbar or the floating toolbar or clicking Speak gt Speak All Articles To File will cause all articles to be spoken to audio files Under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Article Options in the Multi Article section there is an option as to whether all articles are written to a single audio file or to multiple audio files If set to single file the article title of the first article will become the audio file name and the voice specified for the first file will be used for all articles The typical and recommended setting for this is Multiple Files so that each article becomes its own audio file While audio files are being created the Status Bar will provide status information so you can watch the progress When using a SAPI4 voice word highlighting still functions when creating a
58. le is loaded the previous article is deleted If you typically deal with only one thing you may want to hear then once it is done you are going off to look for something else then single article mode may be simpler One powerful use of Single Article Mode is by turning on Automatic Speaking Under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Article Options if you check the Automatically Speak New Text when in Single article mode TextAloud will automatically speak any newly opened articles or new articles added via Clipboard Watching Multi Article Mode Place TextAloud in Multi Article Mode via Options gt Multi Article In Multi Article Mode TextAloud can support an unlimited number of articles Each article is automatically assigned a title based on the first few words in the article You can change this article title by overwriting it in the Title Field When a new article is added the new article is displayed but all previous articles are still available within TextAloud You can change to a previously added article using the Article List dropdown at the top of the window As mentioned most users prefer Multi Article Mode because it builds a queue of articles Then when ready you can listen to individual articles your complete list of articles or easily create audio files from the entire list of articles Based on the Automatically Delete Text After Play setting under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Article Options articles can be automatic
59. lipboard Ignore Clipboard Text less than XX characters If you use the Windows clipboard often for other tasks you may want TextAloud to ignore smaller amounts of text For example if you typically only use TextAloud for longer news stories you might set this value to 200 and any clipboard copies of less than 200 characters will be ignored by TextAloud TextAloud will only act on copies of more than 200 characters Ignore Clipboard Updates if text has not changed Normally this checkbox should be checked Some Microsoft programs including Internet Explorer have bugs that cause them to send duplicate clipboard messages often For example each time you close an internet explorer window the Windows clipboard will act as if a program has copied text to the clipboard even though the contents of the clipboard will not change Checking this will cause TextAloud to completely ignore duplicate copies However a side effect of this is if you manually copy identical text to the clipboard twice in a row TextAloud will ignore the second copy Prompt Options Section TextAloud can be set to either automatically import copied text as a new article or to open the Clipboard Prompt Window to give you a choice of actions to perform on the text The Clipboard Prompt Window is described in detail below Prompt to Copy from Clipboard When this is checked the Clipboard Prompt Window will be displayed anytime new text is copied to the Windows cli
60. lt to listen to Under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Miscellaneous there is a checkbox for Filter non alpha symbols With this checked some characters that aren t typically part of speech will be filtered out by TextAloud to prevent them from being spoken The characters typically filtered out by this setting are 2 i z along with small and large bullet characters 41 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 42 Pronunciation Editor Each voice has its own characteristics and quirks The newer voices pronounce most words correctly but no voice gets everything perfect TextAloud includes two types of pronunciation editors available for you to use to correct any words that you find are often mispronounced Basic Editor Found via Options gt Pronunciation Editor TextAloud s basic pronunciation editor allows you to correct most types of pronunciation mistakes The basic editor creates entries that apply to all voices and works on a sounds like spelling of words This means the basic editor does not specify actual phonemes as discussed in the How Text To Speech Voices Work section This sounds like spelling of words is often much simpler to use than other types of pronunciation editing The basic edits work by replacing a word in the text with its defined Pronunciation Spelling For example some voice engines attempt to convert abbreviations to their full words In a case like this the word Jan in a senten
61. lumn headers of Word and Pronounced As To Edit an existing word definition click the entry make changes in the Pronunciation field then click Apply e Word The word you are correcting e Pronunciation The new way you d like the word to be pronounced This basically is what is substituted for Word when it is sent to the speech engine e Case Sensitive Check this box if Word is case sensitive For example if you want a substitution to happen for OK but not for ok then Word would be OK and case sensitive would be checked 43 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 44 e Test Voice This selects the voice to be used when you click the Test Button The Text button will speak the new pronunciation of the word NOTE Because voice engines sometimes choose pronunciation based on the context within a sentence there are cases where a word will sound fine within this test but be pronounced differently when read with full sentences e New Click this to start defining a new pronunciation edit This basically clears the fields above e Apply Save the pronunciation edit you have defined above e Delete Delete the currently selected pronunciation edit from your list of defined words e Done Close this window The most common method for identifying mispronunciations you d like to correct is hearing them while listening to an article When listening to text and you hear a word you d like to correct simply click
62. m LICENSE LIMITED WARRANTY AND DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY This license License contains rights and restrictions associated with use of the accompanying softwar Read the License carefully before utilizing the software By using the software you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this license Ls Limited License Grant NextUp Technologies Inc NextUp grants to you Licensee a nonexclusive revocable non transferable worldwide royalty fr license to use this TextAloud software the Software Prior to Licensee s purchase of a Registration Code from NextUp Licensee agrees internal evaluation purposes Following the purchase of a that it shall use the Sof and not for operations of Registration Code from Nex tware solely for Licensee s any critical nature tUp Licensee agrees that it shall use the Software on only a single computer and not for operations of any critical nature 2 Restrictions The Software is copyrighted and title to all copies is retained by NextUp and or its licensors Licensee may back up or archival purposes enforcement of this provision is prohibited by applicable law le Software may not be transferred modify decompile disassemb Software whole or in part No right names of Nextup or NextUp s design construction make copies of Software and trial of Software on for the sole purposes of other computers Unless Licensee shall not extract
63. med to listening to TextAloud will gradually increase the speed of speech to enable faster reading Also see later sections on the Basic and Advanced pronunciation editors to assist with any words that the voices mispronounce 4 0 Single vs Multi Article Mode Before jumping into details of using TextAloud the concepts of Articles and Single vs Multi Article mode need to be understood 15 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 16 An Article is a piece of text you have placed into TextAloud to be read It may be a single news story a single document a single paragraph whatever you want it to be The point is it is dealt with as a single entity within TextAloud This means it is a chunk of text that is dealt with as one and is given a single title Understanding this concept helps understand the remainder of this document If you open a text file into TextAloud that becomes a single article If you copy an entire news story to TextAloud using the clipboard that becomes a single article Single Article Mode There are two distinct modes of operation in TextAloud Single Article Mode and Multi Article Mode You can change Mode by choosing Options gt Single Article or Options gt Multi Article Most users will keep TextAloud in Multi Article mode as detailed in the next section However there are situations where a user may want to use Single Article Mode In Single Article Mode you can only deal with one article at a time Anytime a new artic
64. menu TextAloud will create a blank article allowing you to type or paste in text manually Internet Explorer Plug in TextAloud now includes an Internet Explorer Plug In After installing TextAloud if you ll restart Windows you can then select View gt Toolbars gt TextAloud in Internet Explorers main menu you can display the TextAloud toolbar within Internet Explorer This toolbar allows you to directly speak text within Internet Explorer TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 7 Optional Premium Voices TextAloud supports a variety of voices for almost every need NextUp com sells a wide variety of voices to add personality and support for many languages In particular you should visit the pages below to sample these recommended voices e AT amp T Natural Voices http www nextup com attnv html e NeoSpeech Voices http www nextup com neospeech html e Cepstral Voices http nextup com Cepstral html Creating Audio Files TextAloud can create audio files from your text These files can be wav mp3 or WMA files To do this set your output file options via Options gt Voice and File Options gt File Options Then use the lt Speak To File gt button in TextAloud or Speak gt Speak All Articles to File on the main menu Completed audio files will be placed in the File Output Directory you specified and will be ready for playback on your PC or to move to your portable audio device or burn to an audio CD TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 8 W
65. mmend setting this HotKey as Control Alt Shift S Pause Resume Speaking If TextAloud is speaking when this HotKey is pressed speaking will be paused just as if you d selected Speak gt Pause on the TextAloud main menu Once speaking is paused pressing this combination again will resume speaking This is helpful for temporarily pausing TextAloud quickly for example if the phone rings while listening We recommend setting this HotKey as Control Alt Shift R Stop Speaking When this HotKey combination is pressed if TextAloud is speaking the speaking will immediately be stopped just as if you d selected Speak gt Stop on the TextAloud main menu We recommend setting this hotkey to Control Alt Shift Q Proofread Proofreading is discussed in detail in the Proofreading With TextAloud section When working in any program where you can highlight text pressing the Proofread HotKey combination will cause a popup window to be displayed showing the highlighted text and the text will be spoken with word highlighting Clicking anywhere in the text area of this window will stop speaking and close the window We recommend setting this HotKey as Control Alt Shift P Each HotKey is defined under Options gt HotKey Setup You first select a letter or number from the dropdown list on the far right for each item then check any or all of Control Alt and Shift to complete the HotKey specification If after defining HotKeys you find that they do
66. n field supply the text that should be substituted for any text that matches the Mask or Regular Expression Use sets of parentheses in the Mask Regular Expression to indicate sub expressions that should be included in the Pronunciation field 1 in the pronunciation field references the first parentheses set 2 the second set and so on This allows you to change the pronunciations of text patterns where the substituted text contains pieces of the strings that match the patterns The following examples will illustrate how to use a Mask or Regular Expressions to change the pronunciation of year numbers The sample problem is to ensure that year numbers like 1987 are pronounced as nineteen eighty seven and not one thousand nine hundred and eighty seven 46 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 47 Example 1 Year Number Pronunciation Using a Mask To solve this problem using a mask enter the following text into the Word and Pronunciation fields Word mask _19 _ Pronunciation lt s gt nineteen 1 2 The pattern specified by the mask is a leading word separator followed by the string 19 two digits and another word separator Whenever this pattern is detected in the text the text in the Pronunciation field will replace it The lt s gt in the pronunciation indicates to insert a space This is necessary because the first character matched by the mask is a word separator so a leading space should be included in the substitution Foll
67. ndow 27 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 28 As mentioned above if Clipboard Prompting is turned on TextAloud will display the following clipboard window TextAloud MP3 Copy Clipboard to Speech Buffer Hew Append Cancel Hide Detail lt lt The options below control the display of this popup Also see the Clipboard Options panel under TextAloudHP3 Options MW Watch Clipboard Ignore Clipboard Text less than i 0 characters Display Prompt for 20 seconds Hold the mouse over each option for help on what the option does More Info Current Mode is Multi article Mode Items on this window are e lt New gt Click the New button to import the clipboard text into TextAloud as a new article e lt Append gt Click the Append button to append the clipboard text to the bottom of the current article This is useful for example if you are copying a news story from Internet Explorer but you bring it in as two separate copies in order to skip over some advertisement text 28 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 29 lt Cancel gt Click Cancel to do nothing with the text Hide Details Clicking the Hide Details link will close the lower section of the window providing a smaller popup window in the future which displays only the action buttons Watch Clipboard Ignore Clipboard Text and Display Prompt These are identical to those items in the Clipboard Settings window from above Status Bar The st
68. ng function is that you need to hear small sections of text at a time while watching the words being highlighted Since you typically aren t typing this text within TextAloud but within your email or word processing program you need a way to quickly return to the text to make any corrections This means that using the TextAloud main window could become cumbersome So instead with the Proofread HotKey a popup window will show you the text if you see a mistake simply click on the window and speaking will stop and you will be returned to the program you are writing in to make corrections 67 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 6 8 To demonstrate this process assume you are typing a document in your word processor such as Microsoft Word Once the document or a section of the document is complete and you are ready to proofread return to the top and highlight a paragraph Next hit the Proofread HotKey combination Control Alt Shift P for example The TextAloud Proofreading Window will appear as shown below IS TextAloud Proofread The theory behind using the Proofreading function is that you need to hear small sections of text at a time while watching the words being highlighted Since you typically aren t typing this text within TextAloud but within your email or word processing program you need a way to quickly return to the text to make any corrections This means that using the main window could become cumbersome So instead with
69. ngle computer An additional payment is required for each use of the Software on another computer Only a single copy of the Software may be made solely for backup or archival purposes The software may also be transferred to a single hard disk Any use of this software in violation of the above is not licensed If you have any questions please E mail support NextUp com 79 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 80 Voice Licensing and Allowed Usage Each voice sold by NextUp com includes its own license agreement which you agree to when installing the voice While each voice vendor s license agreement varies slightly here are some general guidelines that apply When using older Microsoft voices there are no restrictions on usage or use or redistribution of audio files created with those voices When using any of the premium voices including AT amp T Natural Voices Cepstral Voices and Neospeech voices the voices are sold for personal use only Most commercial uses are prohibited under the consumer license Audio files created by these voices cannot be distributed to others under the standard consumer licenses NextUp com does have commercial and redistribution licenses available for these premium voices Pricing varies greatly by voice and proposed usage so contact support nextup com for more details Volume School and Site Licensing TextAloud is available at a discount for volume purchases NextUp com work
70. not seem to work or some other program seems to react to the combination try changing the combination Some experimentation may be required depending on other programs in use on your computer More obscure combinations including Control Alt and Shift seem to be safer and less often interfered with 73 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 74 Customizing Shortcut Keys Shortcut keys are commonly used in almost all Windows programs These key combinations are quick ways to perform common tasks and are linked to menu items When you look at a menu in a Windows program to the right of the menu item you ll frequently see shortcut keys defined Within TextAloud most menu items have shortcut keys For example if you look at the File menu on the TextAloud main menu you ll see items such as e Open Ctrl O e New Article Ctrl N In this case Control O is a shortcut to the File gt Open menu item While working within the TextAloud program holding down the Control button and pressing O will open the File Open dialog just as if you had pressed File gt Open Learning these shortcut keys can greatly speed your work within TextAloud More importantly for sight impaired users shortcut keys provide their only means of performing some actions since mouse usage is limited TextAloud includes pre defined shortcut keys for the most frequently used menu items However not all menu items have shortcuts and some users may wish to change or adjust the shortcut
71. on using SAPIS XML Tags you can download the SAPI documentation at http www microsoft com speech techinfo apioverview _doc Another important note is that installing TextAloud will not automatically install both the sapi4 and sapi5 interfaces Windows 98 ships with SAPI4 Windows 2000 and XP ship with SAPIS already installed If neither is available TextAloud will warn you and give you directions for installing one or the other You can download and install SAPI4 and SAPI5 via http www nextup com sapi html 11 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 12 Voice Sample Rates Audio Files are digital representations of analog signals When these sounds are digitized they are sampled and converted to numbers The rate at which they are sampled is the sample rate That sounds a little complicated and it is The only part you really need to remember is that each voice engine has a natural sample rate This rate is represented as a number 8kHz 11kHz 16kHz or 22kHz For most uses this sample rate doesn t matter as long as you are happy with the sound you are getting from the voice There are a couple of uses where this sample rate does matter though Telephony usage where voices are played over the phone such as with voice menu systems or computer based answer machines typically require 8kHz voices You ll notice when you purchase AT amp T voices or Neospeech voices from NextUp com you ll see an option to purchase either 8kHz or 16kHz voices Wh
72. ons are e 1 Toolbar Movement Bar Grab this bar to move the TextAloud toolbar to a different location within the IE toolbar area e 2 Speak Button Click this button to speak text from the displayed web page If you haven t highlighted any text on the page the entire page will be spoken If you highlight only a portion of text on the page that portion will be spoken Text is not added as an article within TextAloud s main window TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 6 1 e __3 Stop Button Stops any current speaking e 4 Create Article Button Click this button to add text as a new article within TextAloud s Main Window If you have highlighted a portion of text in on the web page then that text will be the contents of the new article If no text is highlighted the new article will contain all text on the web page e 5 Display Option Menu Click this button to display the TextAloud Plug In Options Menu Choices on this menu are o TextAloud Options Displays the TextAloud Options window o Voice and File Options Displays the Voice and File Options Window o Hide Show TextAloud Window Clicking this will minimize the TextAloud Main Window if it is displayed or show the TextAloud Main Window if it is minimized o About Displays the TextAloud Help gt About Window e 6 Voice Selection Use this Voice Dropdown to select the voice to be used when speaking text using the Speak Button
73. or o leased as title or interest in and decrypt licensors is granted hereu designed or intended for use in on line control of aircraft navigation or aircraft communications operation or maintenance of any or in the desig 77 therwise revers ngineer signed or sublicensed in to any trademarks or trade nder Software is not air traffic aircraft n construction or in the nuclear facility 3 Confidentiality TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL 78 Software is confidential and proprietary information of NextUp and or its licensors Licensee agrees to tak unauthorized disclosure or use 4 The Sof IMPLIED R Pi PR ES ERCHANT AB Disclaimer of Warranty tware is provided AS IS wi ENTATIONS AND WARRANTI FITNI an ILITY EREBY EXC LU DED je Li mi NO EV ENT Ca tion of Liabili SS FO ty WILL N ECT IN ED AND DI RECT SP EXTUP BE ECIAL F TABLE CONSEQU FOR r adequat thout a warran ES R A PARTICULAR PURPOS ENTIAL steps to protect Software from ESS OR ty of any kind ALL EXPR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF E OR NON INFRINGEMENT INCLUDING ARI an E F ANY LOST INCIDI EVENU NTAL 1 PROFIT OR DATA OR FOR OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES HOWEV Fr E ER an
74. owing this space the string nineteen is added The 1 and 2 strings in the Pronunciation reference parentheses sets in the mask 1 is replaced by the last two digits of the year and 2 is replaced with any trailing punctuation Example 2 Year Number Pronunciation Using a Regular Expression To solve the same problem using a Regular Expression enter the following text into the Word and Pronunciation fields Word re b19 d d b Pronunciation lt s gt nineteen 1 2 The use of a regular expression is very similar to a mask in this case The b strings in the Regular Expression match on word separators and the d strings match on the digits 0 thru 9 47 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 48 Advanced Phoneme Editor As discussed in the How Text To Speech Voices Work section Phonemes can be used to define how a word is spoken When used only with some SAPI5 Voices that support it TextAloud offers an Advanced Phoneme Editor to give you greater control over how some words are spoken Phonemes are defined as Definition A phoneme is a member of the set of the smallest units of speech that serve to distinguish one utterance from another in a language or dialect Examples A unit of speech is considered a phoneme if replacing it in a word results in a change of meaning Here are some examples of phonemes e pin becomes bin e Bat becomes rat e cot becomes cut 48 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 49 To enable the adv
75. pboard When unchecked the prompt will not be displayed and the Default Action will be performed automatically Display Prompt for XX Seconds The Clipboard Prompt Window is displayed as a popup window showing on top of other windows after text is copied to the clipboard Using this setting you can specify how long the window should be displayed For example if you specify 3 seconds the window will be displayed for 3 seconds This gives you 3 seconds to click a button to specify what you want to do with the text If you do not click within 3 seconds the window will close and the Default Action will be executed If you need longer to decide what to do increase this time so the window will be displayed longer 26 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 27 e Default Action Your selection here determines what will be done with clipboard text if you do not have prompting turned on or if you do not select an action before the Clipboard Prompt Window disappears Options for this default action are O New Automatically import the clipboard text into TextAloud as a new article If in Single Article Mode and Automatic Speaking is turned on automatically speak the text Append Automatically append the clipboard text to the bottom of the current article Cancel Do nothing with the clipboard text Remember Last Automatically perform whatever action was chosen the last time you actually clicked a button on the Clipboard Prompt Wi
76. ple rates in the 44kHz range and may also require Stereo instead of Mono audio files Encoding in Stereo will significantly increase your audio file sizes and encoding times Since the originating TTS output is truly Mono it is best to use stereo encoding only if required by the portable device you re using The following table provides recommended settings for various voices Voice Engine Recommended Bit Sample Rate Microsoft Voices 32kpbs 22 05kHz Mono Lernout amp Hauspie 16kpbs 11 02kHz Mono 8kHz AT amp T Natural Voices 8kHz 16kpbs 16kHz Mono NeoSpeech 16kHz AT amp T Natural Voices 24kpbs 16kHz Mono Cepstral Voices 16kHz 24kpbs 16kHz Mono NeoSpeech Voices Most good CD burning software can burn audio CDs from WAV and MP3 files generated by TextAloud If you do not have audio burning software check out MP3 CD Burner at http www nextup com partners html If you have Windows XP Windows Media Player has built in Audio CD Burning Capabilities Just choose Copy to CD or Device on the left side of the program Drag TextAloud created audio files onto Windows Media Player then click the Record button with a blank CD inserted into your burner 53 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 54 Setting Bit Sample Rates for WAVE Files Normally when creating Wave files you simply want TextAloud to keep the Wave file with the same properties that are native to the voice used This will create the best sounding Wave files Howeve
77. ples used Very small voice engines such as those older Microsoft and L amp H voices take up only a couple of megabytes of disk space This makes them great for downloading easily and not requiring a lot of resources The trade off is in the depth and richness of the sound they generate On the other end of the spectrum voices such as AT amp T Natural Voices include nearly 500 megabytes of sound samples This allows the program to do a much better job approximating human speech with a large number of high quality samples to build from The trade off is these require a great deal of disk space and more CPU power to create real time speech 10 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 11 SAPI Speech Application Interface As with many aspects of computing using Windows computers Microsoft has created standard interfaces for speech SAPI or Microsoft s Speech API is Microsoft s attempt to create a standard way for multiple companies to develop voices and make them available through a common programming method Normally users never need to know about these interfaces However there are two versions of SAPI with varying abilities and with different support from different engines These two versions are SAPI4 and SAPI5 TextAloud supports both however some engines and some features are only supported in one or the other SAPI4 is the earlier version of the standard It is supported by all of the voices created before 1999 and some created later SAPI4
78. provides a convenient way to import text into TextAloud Via Options gt HotKey Setup define a key combination for the Import New HotKey Choosing something obscure such as Control Alt Shift N insures you select a sequence that isn t already in use by another program Once this is defined you can work within any program highlight some text then press Control Alt Shift N and the highlighted text will automatically be imported into TextAloud as a new article Using this Import New HotKey gives you an easy way to create new articles while working in Documents Email or other text programs without having to use Clipboard Watching which can sometimes become annoying Internet Explorer Plug in More details on the Internet Explorer Plug In are provided in a later section After installing TextAloud 2 0 then restarting Windows the TextAloud toolbar will be available within Internet Explorer via View gt Toolbars gt TextAloud The 3 icon in this toolbar looks like a printed document with a folded corner This is the Create TextAloud Article from Browser Text button When viewing a web page within Internet Explorer if you select text within the browser window then click this button a new TextAloud article will be created containing the highlighted text If no text is selected within Internet Explorer then pressing the Create button will create a new article in TextAloud containing all of the text from the displayed web page 31 TEXTAL
79. r there are specific applications where Wave files of a given bit sample rate are required Most often this is when the audio file is going to be used on specific hardware such as telephone related applications In these cases TextAloud has the capability to create Wave files of given attributes To enable this feature you must set TextAloud to use SAPIS5 Only for SAPI Version under Options gt Voice and File Options gt Engines Voices Once this is set if you choose the File Options TAB you can change the Bit Sample Rate while specifying WAVE for the file type Note that because conversion to non native bit sample rates is required the resulting Wave file may not sound as good as it did when the default was chosen but this will allow you to create Wave files of a specific format NOTE One special note about audio files By default TextAloud writes a couple of seconds of extra silence on the end of each audio file This has to do with some potential uses of audio files For example some MP3 players will pre switch to the next audio file a couple of seconds early cutting off the end of the previous audio file or cutting off the last sentence sometimes in the case of speech files To work around this problem by default TextAloud adds the extra silence on the end of each audio file This behavior can be changed so the silence isn t added Contact support nextup com for details Creating Audio Files The first step to creating audio
80. ropdown list to the right of the Stop key These key dropdowns typically show None when not enabled Next check the checkboxes for Control Alt and Shift After defining this start TextAloud speaking a long article then minimize TextAloud Now hold down the Control Alt and Shift keys and press the Q key while those are down TextAloud will stop speaking As described the HotKey performs the Stop action in TextAloud even when you aren t interacting with the TextAloud window or when that window isn t even displayed It is important to note however that TextAloud must be running either in the system tray or with the window displayed for HotKeys to perform If TextAloud is completely closed and not running in the system tray defined HotKeys have no effect 72 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 73 The 5 available TextAloud HotKey actions are Import New When working in any program where you can highlight text pressing the Import New HotKey combination will cause highlighted text to automatically be imported into TextAloud as a New Article If you happen to be in single article mode with automatic speaking turned on the text would be spoken We recommend setting this HotKey as Control Alt Shift N Speak Text When working in any program where you can highlight text pressing the Speak Text HotKey combination will cause TextAloud to speak the highlighted text Text will not be imported into or shown in the TextAloud window We reco
81. s with hundreds of schools and businesses to bring the power of TextAloud to their workers and students In the workplace our experience has shown that TextAloud can greatly improve productivity of workers who generally have to absorb a great deal of information When combined with portable listening workers turn idle commute times into useful time by listening to news and information proofreading documents or catching up on email by listening instead of reading Within educational settings there are clear uses of TextAloud including but not limited to e Improving reading skills for poor readers and dyslexics e Improved writing output through better proofreading e Extensive uses in English as Second Language ESL as well as foreign language learning e Providing valuable access to written words for sight impaired students For volume pricing discounts and more information contact support nextup com TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 81 18 0 Getting More Information and Help In addition to this manual there are several other information sources available to you http www nextup com Our site provides product information and purchase links as well as downloads of the latest version of TextAloud support nextup com Email us at any time with any questions you have You ll find that we provide very quick and helpful responses to all email questions http nextup com mailinglist html Signup for the NextUp com Monthly Newslet
82. sed menu items Pause your mouse over an icon and a popup hint will provide a description of the icon s function You can adjust the size of the toolbar remove it completely or remove captions via the View gt Toolbar menu item The last two buttons on this icon provide information about TextAloud for schools and Language support These are primarily marketing vehicles and you may right click these buttons and choose Hide on the popup menu to remove these two icons Article List Dropdown This is visible only in Multi Article Mode Click this dropdown list to see the full list of all articles currently in TextAloud then select an article title to load it into the main window Article Title This field is the Title of the current article Article titles are generated based on the first few words of an article when the article is first loaded You can change the title by typing in this field NOTE The article title becomes the filename when creating audio files Voice Dropdown The voice dropdown shows the voice selected for the current article You can click this field to select a different voice from enabled voices When you change the voice the speed and pitch settings on the right of the screen will be adjusted to the saved values for that voice TextAloud Text Area This area is where text of the current article is displayed When manually creating an article type or paste in this area While the article is being spoken the
83. ter as well as read back issues of our Newsletter We typically provide a tip of the month for getting more out of TextAloud along with any info about updates and changes to the product http nextup com phpBB2 index php Our User Forum is a gathering place for TextAloud enthusiasts Many of our existing users are more than willing to provide help regarding TextAloud and solving any problems or answer questions you may have TextAloud includes a comprehensive help file available via Help gt Contents on the TextAloud main menu or by pressing F1 on your keyboard within most TextAloud windows 81 19 0 Index A Adobe Acrobat Files 4 20 American English 11 12 API 9 74 AT amp T Natural Voices 5 8 9 12 13 35 37 51 52 78 audio CD 5 57 60 Audio CD 48 51 57 audio files 5 10 14 16 35 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 60 64 78 Available Voices 11 34 38 B Batch File Converter 6 54 61 Bitrates 10 50 Bookmarks 6 69 British English 11 12 C Cepstral Voices 5 12 51 78 changing voices 6 Clipboard Prompt 24 25 Clipboard Watching 4 14 19 22 23 27 28 29 command line 74 concatenative 7 D Dutch 11 E E Books 60 63 F file types 20 49 61 Filter 39 font 73 fonts 6 French 10 11 12 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 82 82 G German 11 12 H HotKey 6 29 59 65 66 70 71 HotKeys 4 html
84. the left side shows all words you have defined in the advanced editor Select a word there to load it into the Word and pronunciation fields to edit The significant difference between the basic editor and this advanced editor is what is allowed in the pronunciation fields Only defined Phonemes from the table in the middle of the screen can be used As you define the pronunciation of a word you scroll through the list of available phonemes then double click the phoneme to have it appended to the pronunciation When done click Apply then done Note that some advanced features such as Primary Stress and Secondary Stress are provided to adjust emphasis on syllables but not all voices will obey these instructions Edits defined in the advanced editor only apply when using SAPI5 voices Note on Neospeech Voices Neospeech voices currently do not support phoneme edits 49 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 50 Voice Switching TextAloud 2 0 has the ability to switch voices within the middle of an article This is another of the features that is only available when TextAloud is set to use SAPI5 Voices Only After this is done you can right click at any spot within the text and choose Insert Voice Change or choose Edit gt Insert Voice Change and TextAloud will insert a special voice change TAG This tag will look similar to lt voice required name Crystal16 gt When speaking text and it gets to this TAG TextAloud will switch to the Crysta
85. the next 5K would go to MyBook002 txt The other method of splitting is to look for certain keywords to signal a spot in the file to split For example you may see that your input file is a book at the start of each Chapter the work Chapter is present By splitting by keyword and then putting chapter into the comma delimited list of strings field then each time the word chapter is found in the input document a new split chapter file will be created Preview Click this to see an estimate of how many new files will be created by the split This gives you a chance to verify settings make sense and that you will get a reasonable number of files to work with after the split Split This will perform the file split based on the above settings Cancel Closes this window 64 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 65 Copy Protected E Books Some e books particularly those you purchase may not be in a txt format The most popular formats are protected PDF files and Microsoft Reader lit files These file have been protected by their authors to prevent users from extracting the text in order to protect their copyrights and prevent people from giving away or posting the books on the internet TextAloud cannot directly read the text of these types of e books However you may still have options for listening to these books Microsoft Reader has some built in limited speech capabilities Using this speak function in Microsoft Read
86. tp www scansoft com textbridge OmniPage http www scansoft com omnipage ABBY FineReader http www abbyy com Presto OCR http www newsoftinc com index htm ReadIris Pro http www irisusa com products readiris pc index html Using these products to convert scanned text to txt files will then allow you to import the text into TextAloud to be spoken or to create audio files from them TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 67 15 0 Proofreading with TextAloud An often overlooked use for TextAloud is to help proofread Spell Checkers within word processors and email clients help correct many common typing and spelling errors but do little to correct other common problems such as typing the wrong word leaving out words or poorly constructed sentences Proofreading the old fashioned way is often in ineffective too because our brains are so adept at reading that we will often not catch mistakes But hearing our own written words spoken back to us in another voice will almost always alert us to mistakes To assist with this proofreading task TextAloud has a special Proofread HotKey and Popup Proofreading window Via Options gt HotKey Setup you can set a keyboard combination that will activate the proofreading window Choose something obscure to insure other programs will not be using the combination We suggest using Control Shift Alt P but you can experiment with any combination that works for you The theory behind using the Proofreadi
87. udio files and complete is shown Because of limitations with SAPI5 during audio file creation with SAPI5 voices word highlighting is disabled and only the amount of audio data written is displayed during file creation 55 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 56 Batch Audio File Conversion There are times when you may have several document files that you want to convert to audio files all at once The TextAloud Batch File Conversion utility found via File gt Batch File Converter gives you the chance to select multiple documents for conversion at once Batch File Converter Filename C Documents and Settings ken My Documents CepstralD emo html C Documents and Settings ken My Documents ceptest txt C Documents and Settings ken My Documents customerlistexport txt C Documents and Settings ken My Documents docsforms pdf C Documents and Settings ken My Documents FAX COVER SHEET doc C Documents and Settings ken My Documents hotels doc C Documents and Settings ken My Documents Install Alberto doc C Documents and Settings ken My Documents invoice_pdf pdf Remove Selected Remove All Convert Exit Output Directory C Documents and Settings ken My Documents tafiles Browse Audio File Format MP3 Audio Quality 32 kbps 22 05 kHz Mono X Voice Selection Select Voice AT amp T Crystall6 v The Batch File Converter window is shown above To convert several files as once click the lt Add Files gt button to s
88. und Bit Rates When encoding to WMA or MP3 files you ll also be given the chance to choose Bitrates These loosely specify the amount of data packed into the file for every second of audio Traditionally when dealing with music the higher the bit rate the better the sound and the larger the file However when dealing with audio files generated from speech higher Bitrates do not always produce better sounding files This has to do with conversion between sample rates and noise that can be added during the encoding 52 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 53 Choosing Bit Sample Rate When creating MP3 or WMA files you have the option under Options gt Voice and File Options gt File Options to select the Bit Sample rate for the audio files you create You will notice that different combinations of Bit Rate and Sample Rate effect the quality of your MP3 and WMA files A general rule is to choose a Bit Rate or Sample Rate that gives you the best quality but try to keep the Bit Rate as small as possible Smaller Bit Rates equate to smaller audio files and faster encoding time When choosing a sample rate it is important to remember that high quality digital speech can be produced at much smaller sample rates than digital music If you re planning to copy MP3 or WMA files to a hand held device ike an MP3 Player you may also need to check if your device requires a particular audio format Some players designed for digital music only support sam
89. urrent article and start speaking the next article by choosing O O Speak gt Skip to Next Article on the main menu The lt Skip gt toolbar icon The lt Skip gt icon on the floating toolbar Choosing Skip on the menu displayed by right clicking on the TextAloud System Tray Icon NOTE If Automatically Delete is turned on under Options gt TextAloud Options gt Article Options when you skip an article it will automatically be deleted Skip to Previous Article While in Multi Article Mode and Speaking All Article if Automatic Delete is not on you may skip to next article with the commands above and you may skip back to a previous article using Speak gt Skip To Previous Article NOTE Skip to Next and Previous can also be used when TextAloud is not speaking to simply switch between multiple articles when in Multi Article Mode Skipping Forward and Back Within a single article While text is speaking there are several menu options under Speak gt Skip Forward and Speak gt Skip Back allowing you to skip forward and back by line paragraph or a set number of lines These menu items by default do not have shortcut keys defined but using Options gt Shortcut Setup you can define shortcut keys to allow you to easily skip back and forth as desired during speaking 34 TEXTALOUD 2 0 USERS MANUAL _ 35 10 0 Customizing Speech Text To Speech is an imperfect science Additionally because each listener has different listening
90. will work on most Windows computers It provides little ability to customize speech beyond TextAloud s basic pronunciation editor Voices most often used with TextAloud that will support SAPI4 are the Microsoft voices Mary Mike and Sam along with the older L amp H Voices Some users may also have IBM ViaVoice voices from other products that will be available under SAPI4 AT amp T Natural Voices also support SAPI4 SAPI5 is the newer standard It is supported by newer voices such as AT amp T Natural Voices NeoSpeech Voices Cepstral and other new voices we will be releasing SAPIS adds additional features not available in SAPI4 These include the ability to change voices within a single article of text for example to create a script read by multiple characters the ability to insert pitch and speech changes into the text and additional specialized TAGs for manipulating speech further A few features within TextAloud are only available when you tell the program to use ONLY SAPI5 Voices This change is made via Options gt Voice and File Options These functions include the Advanced Pronunciation Editor and Inserting Voice Changes NOTE One important thing to note related to advanced SAPI5 features is that not all voices support all SAPI5 options For example Neospeech voices do not support the advanced pronunciation editor AT amp T Voices do not support pitch adjustment or emphasis adjustment For more information on advanced speech manipulati
91. yback of audio Via Options gt TextAloud Options gt Predefined Pauses you can specify longer than normal pauses for end of sentences or end of paragraphs Entering values of 0 seconds uses the default values for the voice being used By putting a other values here you can extend the amount of pause For example putting 1 5 into the Sentence Pause Interval causes TextAloud to pause an additional 1 5 seconds at the end of each sentence You may also manually insert pauses at any spot within text By right clicking at a spot in the text a popup menu will be displayed From there choose Insert Pause and you ll see several pre defined pause intervals to choose from Choosing an interval will insert a Pause TAG For example if you choose 0 5 Seconds the Pause tag that will be inserted is Pause 0 5 While speaking text when TextAloud encounters this pause tag while speaking there will be 1 2 second of silence at that spot You may also manually insert pause TAGs of any value by inserting the text Pause x y where x y is the amount of time in seconds to pause Non Alpha Filtering Speech engines are designed to work primarily with standard text When used with some types of text such as email and other documents that may have symbols non standard punctuation or other characters not typically meant to be spoken some speech engines will speak these characters This can often be very distracting and make the real text of interest difficu

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