Greg, sorry I imagine you already said, but is there a reason why you
don't use the say program? Is it possible with a little modification
to use this if you choose not to use the current voices for the utility?
tnx
Scott
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Jun 11, 2006, at 5:15 PM, Greg Kearney wrote:
Here is a brief primer on Daisy books and the Mac which I hope will
help.
A Daisy digital talking book is a new form of talking book which comes
on digital media. These book can, depending on how they are produce,
offer a wide range of navigational features such as navigation by
headings or pages. There are many different kinds of Daisy books
ranging all the way from simple recording of books transfered to
digital media from and analog (tape) recording to fully navigable
books such as the production of the Bible I did. Some may include the
source text and other not. It is even possible to produce a Daisy DTB
with no recordings in them at all which is what you get from
Bookshare.org
To make matters even more confusing there are two different versions
of Daisy DTBs Daisy 2.02 and Daisy/NISO 2005.
All Daisy playback devices will play Daisy 2.02 but not all will play
Daisy/NISO 2005 books. Katieplayer and Victor Reader for MacOS will
only read Daisy 2.02 books at this time. And they will only play books
that have recordings not text only books. This is why I focus my
efforts on making Daisy 2.02 books.
Bookshare.org books are Daisy/NISO 2005 but they let you get an HTML
copy to read if you don't have a Daisy playback software on your
computer. Of course you will lose all the navigation in the book this
way. You also must have a screen reader to read the text as Bookshare
books are text only, no audio. My DTBmaker software will turn a
Bookshare book into a full text, full audio Daisy 2.02 book if needed.
A final wrinkle in all of this is that some producers, RFB&D for
example, encrypt their books so you need special decryption keys to
read them. Contact RFB&D for more information.
Players
As I said above there are many players some of which can read both
types of Daisy books and some which can not.They are broken down into
two classes hardware players and software players.
Hardware players usually take CD-ROMs and most of them read both Daisy
2.02 and Daisy/NISO 2005 books. Only one that I know will read text
only books and that is the Bookport from APH. It is a memory based
player which turns your books into it's own special format for some
odd reason. It requires special software which, until recently, was
windows only. I understand there is a UNIX version of the
transformation software which can be compiled under OS X and I am
looking into building a GUI for it.
Software player run a wide range from the free to quite expensive.
Most only run under windows. Katieplayer and Victor Reader for MacOSX
are the two for Mac. Neither will read Daisy/NISO 2005 or text only
books (Bookshare) at this point.
Hope this is of some help.
Greg Kearney
