-=> Quoting Mike Ross to James Bradley <=-

 MR> "James Bradley" bravely wrote to "All" (30 Jun
05  20:58:06)
 MR> --- on the heady topic of "Voice Reader"
 
 JB> Hello All:
 
 JB> Someone who is blind wants to participate in Fido. I remember someone
 JB> using a voice synthesizer to read back their mail, that was a simple
 JB> tack-on to BW. I'm sure it was at least Shareware. Can someone recall
 JB> the programs name, or better where to find it?

 MR> IIRC the Soundblaster 16 was bundled with a text to speech reader.

Apparently Blue Wave/DOS has a speech-friendly video mode for 
this purpose: 

    on the  speech hardware/software interface in Blue Wave/DOS.  Although
    this version  of the  mail reader does provide a speech-friendly video
    mode, it  is extremely  slow.  This is due to the fact that writing to
    the PC-BIOS requires a switch from protected mode to real mode.  Since
    PC-BIOS compatible  video writes  can only  be done one character at a
    time, this causes a severe performance penalty.

Remember that this was written back when 386 & 486 CPUs were about 
as fast as you could get. 

Check:

Setup/Configure Mail Reader
Global
Video Configuration
 Speech Software Compatible       No  <=-  Change to  Yes

Press F1 for help on this item. 

                          Speech Software Compatible
                          --------------------------

 Many hours have been spent on the speech hardware and software capabilities
 in the reader.  This option is provided for blind and visually impaired
 users who have voice synthesis hardware and software installed on their
 system.  This speech software compatibility is achieved by the use of direct
 video writes where spoken words are either unnecessary or undesirable, and
 BIOS video writes where the words need to be spoken.

 If you do NOT have a voice synthesis system installed, you should NOT enable
 this option.  Certain screen updates, particularly while reading messages,
 will be extremely slow, and the words will not be spoken anyway...

 You can temporarily enable this option through the use of the /SPEECH
 command line parameter.  When loading the reader, type:

     BWAVE /SPEECH

 at the DOS command line prompt.

 ** Speech support will NOT work with a SoundBlaster, Gravis UltraSound, Pro
    Audio Spectrum, AdLib, or any other multimedia sound card.  You must have
    specialized voice synthesis hardware and software installed.

 ** Speech support is not provided in the OS/2 reader.

 ** Many thanks to Doug Langley for his help in getting speech software
    compatibility into The Blue Wave Offline Mail Reader.


If his computer will read onscreen text, it should already have 
the hardware/software needed. 


 
___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
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