Info-Mac

I would like to type something in WORD 5.0 or in simple text, on my SE/30 and here it play back as speech. Any suggestions on what program I should try to track down? I assume if the original 128K could do it, so can my SE/30. Thanks, Mark

Text-to-Speech is a system-level extension. If you have it installed, then SimpleText will read back your text as will many other programs. If you don't have it installed, you'll have to find some original System install disks.

EDIT: Here are PlainTalk downloads from Apple's archive:

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Su ... nTalk_1.5/

And here is all sorts of information and history about this technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk

Thank you for your help, Turboladdade. I will search my system files for the Text-to-speech extension. I have system 6 disks but not 7.5. I'll check out Plain talk as well. Again, much appreciated.

TEXT to speech is available for the SE 30 but somewhat more simple that later versions. I can confirm that it does work on system 7, which is what your SE30 can run. Brilliant computer, very reliable, pleased your still up and running. You will need system 7 to run text to speech it is not something available to 6.08. If that helps and stops you wasting time.


Software for speech recognition and for speech response are under the area as these files.

Macintosh/System/Speech/About_This_Software.txt
Macintosh/System/Speech/English_Speech_Rec_1.5.4.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/About_This_Software.txt
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/English_SR_1.5_1of2.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/English_SR_1.5_2of2.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/English_TTS_1.5_1of5.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/English_TTS_1.5_2of5.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/English_TTS_1.5_3of5.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/English_TTS_1.5_4of5.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/English_TTS_1.5_5of5.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/Mexican_TTS_1.5_1of3.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/Mexican_TTS_1.5_2of3.smi.bin
Macintosh/System/Speech/PlainTalk_1.5/Mexican_TTS_1.5_3of3.smi.bin


The can be found at the url address
http://www.info.apple.com/support/older ... elist.html


Apple made these available for the purposes of disabled / support.

Once installed one uses Simple text file, selects the text Command All and in the menu selects the read back option speak selected text.

To use TTS using Word 5 you require the Plain talk interface module which is installed in the commands folder of MS Word 5.

This is essentially a patch which installs to send the text to the apple speech driver.

The plain talk PIM as it is called is a something you should obtain from MS direct.

That will be more difficult as my experience of MS is that they debase you and try to sell you the newest piece of software, and shy off with the support for old WP's.

Hi Mark,
what about Macintalk from 1990 and VoiceBox?
You can type in text and let it read to you in a very basic way with System6.0.8.
I only tried with MiniVMac, but the SE30 should work fine.
Best wishes!

Most classic Mac apps (in fact all I've ever encountered) require Apples Text-to-Speech to run. The apps don't produce the voices themselves, they simply call the system-wide speech API. That's the whole point of having globally available APIs.

SimpleText is the most basic way to test that TTS is installed and working properly.

I upped the files (and some more) I was talking about here: http://www.mediafire.com/?8rr8ifd81jmj7ls
Just in case someone would like to try. The 6.0.8 image is bootable with MiniVMac as it is.
If the image is mounted with other OS, it may be unbootable with MiniVMac afterwards.
I honestly have no idea how speech was done back then, but I guess Macintalk was one of the things later evolving to TTS.