Alex: The overlooked new Feature for Leopard

[adjei7]

OK I guess it's not really a new feature, but more of an improvement for an existing feature. Do any of you guys use text to speech? If you did before leopard, then you would know that the available voices sound like total idiots. Alex, the "New voice for Leopard" as he describes himself, is a more advanced speech engine than the other voices, and much more true to life as a result.

As a Social Sciences grad student, I have to do a ridiculously insane amount of reading, and having a digital copy has now become a bonus, cos I can get the new Alex to read it though the not new text to speech feature.

For those that don't know how:
-System preferences pane
-Speech (in the system section)
-go through the system voices (alex only on Leopard, but others are there)
-select "speak selected text when the key is pressed" and chose whatever combo.
-highlight any text pretty much anywhere (internet browser, text doc, etc etc) and press chosen key combo
-enjoy intelligible and coherent voice read your work for you.

I've just had Alex read my lectures notes on the intro to Emile by Rousseau for philosophy of ed. Would have been torture without it.

So how many of you guys use it, or don't?

P.S. Don't tell me, I noticed I have spelt speech wrong in the poll.

[mad jew]

It's just too slow for me. :o

[sunfast]

I've never used it to be honest because I can't think of a situation that it would be useful for me.

Other than making it insult people which is what I used to make Microsoft Sam do.

[johny5]

It's just too slow for me. :o

you can "speed" them up cant you? ;)

[adjei7]

It's just too slow for me. :o

Yea you can speed it up. The same window you choose the voice in, in the settings, is where you can change the speed.

[samh004]

It's cool to show off for a few minutes to friends or for fun yourself, but after that it's not as useful as my eyes.

[mad jew]

you can "speed" them up cant you? ;)


Yea you can speed it up. The same window you choose the voice in, in the settings, is where you can change the speed.


I still find it quicker to read for myself though.

[Pendora]

Alex is usefull but only with English text. If you take a (for me) Dutch text, it is funny to listen to but completely unusefull.
This is the same problem with speech reconation software. Mostly it is only usefull for English speaking people and not for the rest of the world.

[motulist]

Spoken text is great for proof reading. There are a lot if mistakes you can make in your writing that your brain won't even detect when proof reading with your eyes, but which become super obvious when you hear the text spoken.

Check it out.

New music night!
Meet us at the
the supper club!
7:00 pm sharp.
Be there or be square.

- did you immediately see the typo?

Especially grammar mistakes, they look fine when you proof read them in your head, but when you hear them spoken it's obvious that there's a mistake.

[BornAgainMac]

I like the quality but I would have liked a high quality woman's voice.

[Karvel]

I get it to read BBC News articles sometimes and it sounds awful.

[AdeFowler]

I bought Cepstral Millie (British) instead, and a damn fine woman she is too ;)

[johny5]

I still find it quicker to read for myself though.

I have to agree, I find if someone is reading something to me it doesn't stick in but if I read it myself, I have more of a chance remembering it at a later date.
Been 36, I am on a slippery slope to forgetfulness! :D

[clevin]

TTS has been there for many years, in OSes, in individual softwares,, etc. there is a reason why its still not being widely used. Because it is not that convenient for most people.

[davidjearly]

...Other than making it insult people which is what I used to make Microsoft Sam do.

Ha! And I thought I was the only one! It was the only fun thing I remember about being a Windows user.

Thanks for the nostalgic moment.

[mrwizardno2]

I used to SSH into my mac mini from work and yell at my roommate with it. It's no wonder she hated me! hehehe.

You can make it talk from the command line, just type say "whatever you want"

[webgoat]

i use terminal say command to have alex talk... for no real purpose though... but it is fun just to type say followed by anything you want and hear your mac talk it out

[pjrobertson]

I use Alex to read out things like emails to everybody in the room.
I used Acapela's British voices, and they were quite good....until the demo ran out :P

[plinden]

I converted some short stories from http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html to speech using the Alex voice and loaded them on my iPhone for my commute. It's generally pretty good although unusual names and words get mangled.

i use terminal say command to have alex talk... for no real purpose though... but it is fun just to type say followed by anything you want and hear your mac talk it out

It's fun to it the first time when you have little kids - ssh'ing from the office into the Mini in the family room and getting Alex to say "We have to leave. Get your shoes on now!" resulted in shrieks and "daddy, we hear a man" followed by requests to make it say more, in particular potty talk - "daddy, make it say stinky butt".

[Aniej]

Nice post. I like to use it when I am busy with another project, typically one that requires little concentration, but is time consuming. It is great to read out a collection of emails or documents, if i need to think about them in more depth, then I go back and read them myself, but this is great for vetting the important from not so important.

[Makosuke]

Man, if Alex had been around a year or so earlier it would have significantly improved my quality of life, no exaggeration at all.

See, as a result of a throat disorder, I was literally using my Mac to talk for me (got a laptop specifically for that purpose) for about a year. Bruce did a sufficient job, and I was too broke to fork out for Cepstral's better voices, but my wife would have loved to have me sounding like Alex instead (not being a native English speaker, he's far easier to understand among other things).

I can't really complain that I don't need it anymore, though.

Too bad Apple doesn't include any other languages in the TTS subsystem. I'd like Japanese, personally, which is comparatively easy to do given the syllabic and lightly-accented nature of the language.


Incidentally, are there any decent talk-for-me apps available? I found a couple of functional old ones on VT, but ended up cobbling together my own with the dev tools since none behaved the way I wanted.

[iToaster]

You should check out the company that did Steven Hawking's new voice. It's great, they've got english, korean, japanese, and chinese. It'll do a free sample for you, but you can only get it for windows (dang). Pentax Neospeech (http://www.neospeech.com/). It's really fun to mess with :D

[someone28624]

Alex read your post to me. Just because.

[lord patton]

New music night!
Meet us at the
the supper club!
7:00 pm sharp.
Be there or be square.

- did you immediately see the typo?

Especially grammar mistakes, they look fine when you proof read them in your head, but when you hear them spoken it's obvious that there's a mistake.

NO WHERE'S THE ****ING TYPO ****KK11KI1K1K1

[bc008]

thanks for pointing out "alex" for me
finally my on the our time announcements dont sound so weird, or maybe they sound even weirder now that its like a real human.

oh well..

[motulist]

NO WHERE'S THE ****ING TYPO ****KK11KI1K1K1

I can't tell if you're joking or not, so I'll tell you the answer. The word "the" is repeated twice in a row, one is at the end of the line and the second is the first word of the following line, which is why it's less easy to detect when you're just reading it in your head.

[Fiveos22]

I still find it quicker to read for myself though.

I must agree, if you can scan well you can burn through text...

Not very good for studying though.

[TheReef]

There's no keyboard shortcut in TextEdit, it's nested in the menu and too slow to activate. It was command-J back in the day of Simpletext - very convenient.
I hardly use it at all now. :(

[motulist]

There's no keyboard shortcut in TextEdit, it's nested in the menu and too slow to activate. It was command-J back in the day of Simpletext - very convenient.
I hardly use it at all now. :(

Just add a shortcut to it like I did through the keyboard system pref. Now I just hit control-option-s from any program and the highlight text gets spoken.

[TheReef]

Wow I never knew about that feature, thanks heaps! :)
It's amazing, Command-J even appears in the menu now :eek:

EDIT: Haha YES! Command-H now hides Photoshop Elements!