Hi Jon,
If you are sighted and need to get off to a quick start reading
electronic
books in PDF or Word format you might consider checking out GhostReader.
This is a third party text-to-speech product by AssistiveWare, who also
make VisioVoice, a product that a number of VoiceOver users like.
However, this is pitched at the mainstream text-to-speech market,
so it doesn't involve the full-system VoiceOver integration that makes
VisioVoice more expensive. What you would get are improved InfoVox/iVox
voices and an easy-to-use interface for reading out documents and/or
transferring them to audio files that you can play back. GhostReader
supports
switching voices and, what is particularly useful if you need or want to
read text in multiple languages, the ability to switch to InfoVox/iVox
natural sounding voices that handle other European languages with
correct text-to-speech rendering of accents.
Take a look at the web page at:
http://www.convenienceware.com/ghostreader.php
This might be easier for you to start with, since GhostReader supports
skipping paragraphs, replaying sentences, switching voices, etc. and
a bilingual single user license would be $59.95. There was also
extensive discussion about this and about the InfoVox/iVox voices
about a month ago.
It's still worth learning VoiceOver, and it can do things like zoom up
selective lines of text that the general zoom feature cannot. VisioVoice
can zoom selected parts of the screen, and has lots more feature (such
as the ability to run VoiceOver for complete system functions in
languages
other than English). However, take a look at GhostReader and see if
it might work for you.
Cheers,
Esther
On Thursday, September 06, 2007, at 11:06AM, "Jon Solitro" wrote:
My name is Jon, I just began using the mac visionaries mailing list. I
joined because I recently got my first Mac and can see well enough to
use
the zoom feature most of the time. I am in grad school now, however, and
need to read electronic books. They are scanned for me either in PDF or
Word
format. I canot for the life of me figre out how to use Voiceover. I
went to
apple and downloaded the manual to listen to, and its pretty general.
I'm
still having trouble. Can someone walk me through it at all? Is there
someone I can get help from over the phone?
Jon
