One of the reasons you might do that, in fact it's why I do, is so that you can have your speech in one source and something like music or an audible book coming from the sound card through your speakers. I don't like having speech compete with my music or books and can never get the volumes adjusted. I've used a dec-talk external for a long time and really love it. i've used eloquence on the job exclusively, but I prefer having the external device for speech. it's nice to know i could use the BN for this now, if something were to happen to my dec talk for instance.
Sherry -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Lange Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 10:05 PM To: Braillenote List Subject: Re: [Braillenote] Jaws KeyNote driver now available for download Hi Jane, You wrote: > Can someone explain to me why someone would want to use a BrailleNote as a remote synthesizer if the computer already has screen reading software on it? I don't see the logic, I'm afraid. > When you install JAWS using the automatic option, JAWS installs the Eloquence synthesizer by default, and it is this software synthesizer which directs your sound card to produce the speech that you hear through your computer speakers. Optionally, during the guided or advanced JAWS installation, you can choose to install and use voice synthesizers which are hardware devices in the form of boards which can be installed in your PC, such as a Dectalk, Doubletalk or Tripletalk, or you can attach other hardware speech synthesizers such as Dectalk Express, Doubletalk or Tripletalk external synthesizers which connect to your computer via a serial or USB connector cable. These synthesizers cannot produce speech on their own, they require a driver which is a small software program which tells them what to do, just as a driver installed in your PC will tell your printer what to do when you print a document. Some years ago, there was a hardware speech synthesizer called a Keynote SA, which also could produce speech and which sounded very much like the speech in the Braille Note or VoiceNote, as the Braille Note and Voice Note have this same synthesizer chip. The Braille Note emulates the old Keynote synthesizer. In past versions of JAWS, you could hook up a Braille Note or Voice Note to your PC, and drivers were available which enabled JAWS to tell the Braille Note or Voice Note to behave like an older Keynote SA synthesizer to produce speech. With the advent of Windows XP, these drivers were discontinued, but drivers are now available for use with Jaws in Windows XP. So if you don't want to use Eloquence for some reason, you'll have the option of modifying JAWS and using the Braille Note or Voice Note as a remote synthesizer just as you once could do in prior versions of Windows. I hope this clarifies things a bit for you. Regards, Tom ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote
