here is a very exciting bit of news for all of us.

i downloaded the Acrobat e-book reader from adobe.com yesterday.  This is a
new product, and upgrade from the Glassbook reader, not to be confused with
the plain acrobat reader.  This program has a feature which, if the
publisher allows, permits the book to be spoken.  It can also read pdf
documents that you downloaded in the past.  It does this without the need
for an access plugin.  i understand that it uses a certain speech engine if
you have windows 2000, but in my case, using windows 98, it's chosen to use
Flextalk, and the speed is only moderate; I don't think there's a way I can
change it right now without having windows 2000 and a program called
"readplease" about which I know nothing.  However, using this feature does
free us from sitting at the computer and scrolling down every page.  Some
buttons are well labeled, some aren't, but the read aloud button is quite
accessible.

on the down side, it's impossible right now to know when buying an e-book
whether the publisher has allowed the feature to remain inabled.  i have
contacted technical support at adobe and the man I talked with is sending a
rreport on this matter to the corporate office.  what will happen only time
will tell, but until then I would be cautious about purchasing books in
e-book reader format.  However, you might like to go to Adobe's web site and
download the free E-book reader to see if it will work with documents you
already have.

I hope this will prove useful to some of you.

Regards,

Ilene


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