Here is a bit some informationi on digital talking books on the Mac. There are two players for the Mac under development.
Olearia - developed by Curtin University and teh ABQWA in Australia it is a Mac native application which will eventually come to the iPhone and iPod Touch as well. It is open source and can be found in early beta form at http://www.cucat.org/projects/olearia/ Emerson - under development at the Swedish talking book library, Emerson is a cross platform Java based product which runs on all major OSs. It can be downlaoded from: http://code.google.com/p/emerson-reader/ Digital talking books can be loaded to most, but not all hardware devices using teh MacOS finder with USB. Hope this is a help. Greg Kearney Association for the Blind of western Australia On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Jenny Kennedy<blueskyes9112...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Alex and Brent, > Thanks for responding. The daisy books I want to use aren't from RFB. > They are just daisy format. I obtained access to them via my online > corse via handiham.org as part of my online ham radio classes. I'd > like to sort out how this form of digital audio book is used as I > heard either in the handi ham weekly news letter or the rain report > podcast that h.h. are looking to provide more of their learning > resources through the daisy format in the near future and have posted > 2 or 3 books on their site. According to their site they provide > links to an open source program that reads the files and links to an > unpacking tool that reconfigures the files in the book without fuss so > the player can use them. > > I need to sort out a non-windows way of using these files on the mac > but haven't a clue where to start. > > I looked on the cucat web pages, you know that site that has all the > VO friendly mac programs and found a book player. I just don't know > how to use it as the user's guide is in daisy which is is about as > useful to me as a print guide to reading braille. : smile : > > I need to know if we need a secondary program like this windows > unpacking tool to get all the files in the correct order or do you > just download all the files of a given daisy book to a folder and then > just leave them in the folder and open whatever it is you're meant to > open via the player? > I'm sorry for being so thick about all this. I guess this is how some > older people must feel when trying to master the computer at first. > I'm sure once I understand daisy conventions for saving, ordering and > accessing files I'll be like "Oh duh this is really easy how could it > ever of been hard?" > > As for the text to audio stuff. Alex what is this program of which you > speak? Where can I get it? It isn't as massively complex as all this > daisy stuff is it? : grin :. > > On Screenless switchers Darcy did a really good presentation of doing > this via automater but I got quite hopelessly lost. I don't really > understand automater or how to use it. I know it's meant to make > things easy like doing repetive actions on the computer like macros > but I'm shy about fiddling with it as too many blue screens of death > and the like have left me uneasy about doing anything that could cause > the system to crash. I know that is a bad windows mindset. But I'm > just a year off windows and spent 12 or 13 years as a windows user so > some habbits are hard to overcome. > > Okay well Benjamin my baby son is trying to eat my iPod ear buds > again! and Skye is being too quiet so I have to dash off for now. > > If anyone can help me out that would be very lovely. > Best regards. > Jenny > > On 7/2/09, Brent Harding <bhard...@doorpi.net> wrote: >> >> I don't think there's a way to play RFB on it, is there? I thought there was >> something called Katieplayer back when, but I heard they went out of >> business. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Alex Jurgensen" <asquare...@gmail.com> >> To: <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com> >> Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 7:25 PM >> Subject: Re: Audio howto requests: DAISY Books and making text to speach >> Audiobook files >> >> >>> >>> Hi, >>> >>> I don't know what Holly and Darcy used for conversion, but my free >>> tool does the trick. >>> >>> Regards, >>> Alex, >>> >>> >>> On 2-Jul-09, at 4:55 PM, Jenny Kennedy wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Hi everybody, >>>> I was wondering if anyone has done or could do an audio howto on the >>>> following... >>>> >>>> Using DAISY books and their assorted players on the mac. I'm sorry >>>> but the whole consept of these cutting edge books goes over my head. >>>> How do they work? Why are there so many confusing files? What is this >>>> "DNA" file thing and how to use it? How do you unpack a massive lot of >>>> daisy files and put them all back together? What software is best to >>>> use with VO? Just stuff like that. >>>> >>>> And secondly, I know Darcy and Holly covered it on screenless >>>> switchers how to make a text file into an audio book for iPod but I >>>> got sort of lost so is there an easy way to do it or could someone >>>> explain it again? If not it is alright. >>>> orry to cut this short. Skye and Benjamin are wanting ther inner. >>>> Quick and much thanks >>>> Jenny >>>> >>>> > >>> >>> >>> > >>> >> >> >> > >> > > > > -- Gregory Kearney Manager Accessible Media Association for the Blind of Western Australia 61 Kitchener Ave. Victoria Park 6100 Western Australia --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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