[Developer]

Mac OS X has no non-American English text to speech voices since years now. They even removed the Mexican Spanish voice that was available in OS 9.
And now I see the following web site:

http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html

This site clearly demonstrates that British English, Latin American Spanish, French, and German voices are technically possible! So if the technology exists, why doesn't Apple license it for its international users? That's outrageously poor international support in Mac OS X. At least Apple should provide a plugin-in architecture for things like text to speech and speech recognition. I'm willing to bet that third parties would like to fill the gaps Apple left, like they did in the spell checker and with Sherlock channels.

Strangely, even this web site doesn't have the real Castilian Spanish.

[sniffer]

Strangely even spell check in my native tongue is not provided yet by Apple. Third party plug in solved that for me thank god.

[Morenix]

Yes, its a good idea!

[gorgonzola]

Yeah, the AT&T voices are really good in comparison to the old Mac speech junk now. They really should license it...but do people really use text-to-speech? I know I've found it thoroughly useless for my purposes...

[Developer]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
do people really use text-to-speech? I know I've found it thoroughly useless for my purposes...

I used to use it in OS 9 to read longer English articles, because it allowed me to follow them with less concentration. The OS X implementation is too buggy to read longer texts.

[voodoo]

Wow - the AT&T version is really impressive! Common Apple! Make it happen.

[tritonus]

Yes, I agree. This applies also to:

- iTunes (no int'l support yet)
- Sherlock (I never use it -- no int'l support)
- iPhoto (for paper prints)

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
...but do people really use text-to-speech?

Speech synthesis is frequently used for blind persons and for people with LD's like dyslexia and/or ADD, where it's not rare to be able to listen to speech faster than reading it with the same or better comprehension.

So, yes. There are defintaly practical uses for Text-to-Speech features.

Kurzweil has one of the more common applications specifically designed for this purpose.

[Person Man]

Originally posted by tritonus:
Yes, I agree. This applies also to:

- iTunes (no int'l support yet)
- Sherlock (I never use it -- no int'l support)
- iPhoto (for paper prints)

iTunes-- it's not their fault. They need to negotiate terms of distribution with EACH record label in EACH country. It takes time to do that. And before you say "Well, xxx has online music sales in Europe," consider that the music is more locked down than with the iTMS. I'm sure Apple wants European customers to have the same rights to the music as US customers enjoy, and that means more negotiations.

Sherlock-- no excuse

iPhoto-- no excuse

[JLL]

Originally posted by Person Man:
iPhoto-- no excuse

Except if they made an exclusive deal with Kodak - Kodak's service just opened in Europe this month.

[arekkusu]

Everyone who wants better TTS technology, SEND FEEDBACK. Apple has been dragging their feet on this for years. The more people that ask for it, the sooner we will get it.

[Moonray]

Umm yes, the problem is not new, text-to-speech has been there since System 7 and Apple Plain Talk even since System 6 I think. But as old is the knowledge that Apple does poor internationalisation support in some areas. But at least they know about A4 paper and do more or less accurate language-translations of their software, but that does not make the new Sherlock very useful anywhere outside the US.
But then I haven't seen many complaints about that, maybe it's just neat but not necessary extras for most people (I wouldn't complain either if one of Apple's eye-candy effects would be missing).

And yes, I find text-to speech useful in chat applications like IRC, but as said before: the OS X implementation is bad compared to the one of classic OS, some programmable features are not functional and the quality of the output is not the same (it was better in 10.0/1). I find it hard to imagine though, how a multilingual version would read a multilinual text.

Reality is that people like here on this board give more ahhs and oohs to some useless graphic effects and are more willing to discuss why the traffic light buttons on windows of application X not appear properly sunken in and yell BUG BUG and cannot sleep any more until that severe bug is fixed in the next leaked build, than they would appreciate development on this useful technology.
Everyone gets what those deserve.

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[moki]

Originally posted by Developer:
That's outrageously poor international support in Mac OS X. At least Apple should provide a plugin-in architecture for things like text to speech and speech recognition.

MacOS X actually has pretty impressive international support out of the box, especially where Asian languages are concerned.

Regarding the text-to-speech function, I don't think many people in the USA use it anyway... you can have it.

[Diggory Laycock]

I seem to remember when Steve Jobs was demo-ing "speakable items" and Ink in Jaguar at WWDC 2002 he said:

"Our speech recognition is good - but our text to speech is not so good, if anyone out there has good text to speech tech. - we'd be interested "

- or something along those lines.

The English female voice is very good, but the bloke sound like he's slightly drunk:

http://www.diggory.net/grazing/TestSpokenEnglish.mp4

[JKT]

Originally posted by moki:
MacOS X actually has pretty impressive international support out of the box, especially where Asian languages are concerned.

Being significantly better than it was does not of itself make it impressive. If they can't even get the easiest, most trivial internationalisation of the lot (UK) more than half right after however long it has been, I wouldn't hold out much hope for non-English languages.

[Developer]

Originally posted by moki:
MacOS X actually has pretty impressive international support out of the box.

Sorry, but I live in such an inter nation, so I trust my word on it more then yours.

Regarding the text-to-speech function, I don't think many people in the USA use it anyway...

That's maybe because it's not state of the art any more. Apple should license a better text to speech system - one that is available for other languages as well ideally. Or offer a plugin architecture so that third parties can fill in the gap.

[moki]

Originally posted by Developer:
Sorry, but I live in such an inter nation, so I trust my word on it more then yours.

Well, be that as it may, my brother lives in Spain, and my girlfriend is from Malaysia, and they both use Macs, and are simply ecstatic about how well OS X switches between languages (Spanish/Chinese) right from the default install.

They tried that with WndowsXP out of the box, and it required either a localized purchase (for Spanish) or an additional purchase (for Chinese). OS X worked right out of the box.

And even after the machines are set up, the transition from one language to another is painless. I have friends who are Dutch and Korean, and when they come over to use the computer, I just switch the language setting, and boom, they're good to go.

That's maybe because it's not state of the art any more. Apple should license a better text to speech system - one that is available for other languages as well ideally. Or offer a plugin architecture so that third parties can fill in the gap.

Perhaps; but no matter how good it was, I honestly doubt I'd use it for anything, and I doubt Apple sees it as a priority for the operating system.

Even when it was "state of the art" I never used it, nor do I know anyone who did. That doesn't mean *no one* uses it, but I do think they are in the minority, on any OS.

[Developer]

Originally posted by moki:
Well, be that as it may, my brother lives in Spain, and my girlfriend is from Malaysia, and they both use Macs, and are simply ecstatic about how well OS X switches between languages (Spanish/Chinese) right from the default install.

That is very well done in OS X. You brother might have noticed though, that the Spanish voices that were available in OS 9 are missing in OS X. So there are many parts where international support is still lacking, and text to speech is one of them.

[moki]

Originally posted by Developer:
That is very well done in OS X. You brother might have noticed though, that the Spanish voices that were available in OS 9 are missing in OS X. So there are many parts where international support is still lacking, and text to speech is one of them.

Sure; I guess I just consider the text to speech to be very minor; apparently you don't. To each his/her own.

[Diggory Laycock]

Here's another speech tech:

http://www.rhetorical.com/cgi-bin/demo.cgi

[rjenkinson]

almost nobody uses text-to-speech. it's a gimmick.

-r.

[voodoo]

I think text to speech - if well done - can have very useful application in a computer that is the digital hub of a home.

Besides. It is inevitable - since the 70s (and esp. the 80s) we have been *longing* for a 'talking' computer! Like W O W

[JKT]

Originally posted by rjenkinson:
almost nobody uses text-to-speech. it's a gimmick.

-r.

Tell that to a blind or partially sighted person.

It most certainly is NOT a gimmick, it is a vital part of the Universal Access features.

[rjenkinson]

you're right about that. but compare the number of blind or visually impaired people to the total number of users. almost nobody does use the feature. for a small number of people, however, the feature is very useful.

-r.

[Moonray]

Originally posted by rjenkinson:
you're right about that. but compare the number of blind or visually impaired people to the total number of users. almost nobody does use the feature. for a small number of people, however, the feature is very useful.

-r.

And do you have any sources about how many people use it or is that just a wild guess?

-