Hello Francis, Sorry it took so long to get an answer to your question.
I was also interested in converting text to Daisy and here is a free and quite easy to do just that. It will require three downloads: 1. Open Office portable 2. Open XML to DAISY 3. Open XML to DAISY manual I am using the portable version of Open Office because I was unhappy how the normal install version slowed down my computer. The conversion still works with the portable version and you have the added bonus of being to save every thing on a USB drive. You can read the manual for the step by step, but in a nut shell here is what to do. 1. install Open Office 2. unzip the Open XML to DAISY plug in. 3. Start open office 4. navigate to the Tools > Extension Manager > 5 Add > Odt2DaisyAddOn.oxt ( located in the file that you unzipped earlier ) 6. Restart Open Office Once you restart Open Office there will be an export to Daisy option under the files menu. When that option is selected, it will prompt for a file name, then a screen will appear telling you of the data that will be stored in the Daisy document. you will have to choose ok from this screen. Ok and cancel are located at the bottom of the screen This screen does not speak for me, maybe it will for you. The first Daisy book conversion might give a message that the Daisy Pipeline was not found. This message has only appeared once for me. A light version of the Daisy Pipeline is part of what you added to Open Office. After the conversion you will have three folders under the filename that you choose to save the Daisy document as. An audio book a Daisy book a z3986 I do not know what the z3986 is, if you find out let me know. I have given the download urls below: OpenOffice.org Portable | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable Download Open XML to DAISY XML Translator from SourceForge.net http://sourceforge.net/projects/openxml-daisy/files/DAISYTranslator%20Word%20Add-Ins/Release%202.1.1/DaisyTranslator_WordAddin_24March2009.zip/download Download Open XML to DAISY XML Translator from SourceForge.net ( manual ) http://sourceforge.net/projects/openxml-daisy/files/DAISY%20Translator%20User%20Document/Release%202.1.1/Daisy_Translator_Instruction_Manual_24March2009.docx/download HTH TJ ----- Original Message ----- From: Francis E. Khan To: Blind-Computing Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 12:00 PM Subject: [Blind-Computing] Converting plain text files to DAISY files I purchased the Bookport Plus player/recorder from the American Printing House for the Blind in March this year and downloaded approximately 129 books from Gutenberg.org. What I want to do is to change these books from plain text to a DAISY format so that I can listen to them on the Bookport Plus. Does anybody on this list have any expertise in doing this conversion and is it an expensive venture? I tried setting the pitch to minus 5 and the resulting playback sounded very gravelly like a famous jazz trumpeter by the name of Louis Armstrong also known as Sachmo. Any help would be greatly appreciated. For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
