It's been so long since I did any work on my novel that I need to quickly get familiar with what I have written so far.
To be honest though, rather than sitting reading through the pages of stuff on a computer I would rather find a more time preserving method of recapping the story so far.
Therefore, I came up with the idea of listening to it on the way to / from work. So, to do this, I'd need some kind of program that would read the text of my Word file and produce an audio version that I can write to CD.
I think the kind of program for this is called a Text-to-Speach reader. And I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a good one that is preferably free.
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They include those in Windows already. If you're running Linux I should think that you could easily find an better one for free.
I have to say, it puzzles me that there can be people who can't read much faster than any vocal program could intelligibly speak, but I suppose it's possible.
As for a good one, they don't exist. Simply put, your raw text simply doesn't contain the information a computer would need to accurately reproduce anything other than a mechanical recitation of the individual words spelled out on the page. Some people think this is a good way to hear your own writing, it lets you hear when the words themselves aren't enough. I prefer reading the text to even the most talented human readers, so I'm not able to judge what value there is in that.
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My Mac OS, Jaguar, has a speech function built in. I can choose the voice, but all of them sound very mechanical. That's ok, though, for my purposes.
I do exactly what you are wanting to do, because, when I read my own writing, I find I automatically correct it to what I _meant_ to write. Plus, I get tired of reading the same paragraph over and over, just because I suspect it's not right. If I can get the computer to read it to me, I'm much more likely to get straight to the heart of the problem.
Where is the one in windows XP? I've found something called narrator. But I cant get this to read text. It just keeps telling me what programs I have got open and what options I hover my mouse over.
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The one in XP is lousy, and is designed for accessibility rather than real text-to-speech applications. The one in Mac OS X is much better. There are supposed to be some okay ones out there that run on Windows, but I haven't found them.
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posted
In OS X, it's in "system preferences", under "speech." I'm sure it's somewhere else in Windows, so I don't quite know why I'm replying. Oh well. One of those days where I feel like I have to respond to everything.
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From Liberty Hall Resources. I've always kept that part of Liberty Hall open for everyone to use. Go to: http://www.libertyhallwriters.org/phpbb/index.php and look under the Writer's Resources category:
quote:You can do this various ways.
Print your text as a .pdf file, using freeware such as CutePDF, and then, in Adobe Reader, go to View, Read, and you will hear your text read aloud.
Windows XP does have a text-to-speech program called narrator. Narrator is mainly focused on accessibility and is not as snazzy as the Mac's, but you can get it to read text from notepad, wordpad (write.exe), or IE.
1. Paste your text into Notepad or Wordpad. 2. Highlight the text (Edit | Select all). 3. Start | Run | narrator | [Ok] or Start | All Programs | Accessories | Accessibility | Narrator 4. [CTRL]-[Shift]-[Spacebar] 5. Wait patently as Narrator describes the foreground window application then begins to read your text.
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I have DRAGON NATURALLY SPEAKING It also has a read-back command which I found accidentally. It is mechanical, but can help at times. I got an older version when they came out with a new release.
The speach-to-text part requires you to train it. I never got around to learning the speach commands to tell it how to go back and relearn the words.
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