The ARRL number is 1/888/277-5289  Gary KB2YAA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Martin McCormick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: license renewal


> Scott Gillen ZL1CHM writes:
>> Gday Martin
>>
>> Wondering if you are useing speach with the Mac and what you think of it?
>
> It's mostly wonderful. I said on another list that the
> glass was about 2/3 full.
>
> The voice is one of the best sounding voices I have
> heard. There are a couple of other novelty voices that are good
> for a chuckle but the default male voice they named Alex is
> pleasant to listen to and easy to understand.
>
> The one thing I was disappointed in was the performance
> of the UNIX terminal program or maybe the way the speech engine
> interacts with the terminal program.
>
> What happens is that newer input causes the speech
> engine to reset and kills off the speech one was listening to.
> That is good for keyboard input but bad for data coming in from
> the big wide world or even a local program one is running such
> as when compiling source on a UNIX system. You'll start to hear
> something but before you can listen to all of it, it gets cut
> off and something else clobbers it.
>
> When reading documentation or the contents of a window,
> however, it is excellent as speech synthesizers go.
>
> Except for the learning curve, I really like it and I
> would have had a learning curve had I gone with Windows.
>
> I philosophically like Apple's including the screen
> reader in the operating system. In my opinion, it is the only
> way to do things. Now, any Mac running OSX-10.4 or later is
> accessible and one could just walk up to a suitable Mac and use
> it if needed.
>
> Also, the security updates and patches are less likely
> to break speech because Voiceover is just as much a part of the
> OS as the video processing software.
>
> All in all, it is not perfection yet, but I'd give it a
> B and hope they fix that speech engine so that it is more under
> our control and not subject to resetting on the next delayed
> input.
>
> In fairness, you can review the data that came in and
> hear it properly, but that is not a substitute for being able to
> listen to it as it comes in.
>
> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
> Systems Engineer
> OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group
>
>
>
>
> -- 
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