Hi Gordon, Well, the real issue is that even the speech engines try to substitute on a lot of occasions, such as abbreviations, date formats, etc. VoiceOver does not have control over this, as which substitutions are being used depends entirely on the synthesizer that you use. I like abbreviations, if the speech gets them right if there are multiple instances of the same abbreviation which means something different, however, it'd be nice to actually be able to control which ones are used based on the speech engine that you use or even let VoiceOver control this aspect. Unfortunately, where Apple has actually done the most damage is when using letters like æ, ø and å where they have replaced the pronunciation in the original Vocalizer speech engine with the Apple translation from English straight to Danish, so that ø for example becomes "o with slash" if translated.. The actual engine does this correctly, but Apple for some reason seemed to want to change this, and telling them how it should be is an effort in futility.
I used to love ALex, but in Lion I just can't get used to him. He doesn't pronounce things that different now, but it's just the gruff tone in his voice in general that I don't like. I find his speech more flowing, but even so, the gruff tone puts me off. A friend of mine described him as a "kind preacher" which kind of amused me but I found myself agreeing with that statement in the end. I will say that I wish we had a lot more control over how things are spoken. While we do have a Pronunciation Editor, it does not permit you to edit abbreviations for the voices and I suppose for a good reason. it would still be nice to switch it off, or even select which ones you'd want to use even if you were unable to edit. Regards, Nic On Aug 29, 2011, at 2:28 PM, Gordon Smith wrote: > Hi Nic > > Last point first. I need to write to AssistieWare I thin, because this is a > real issue that's causing confusion. Apple is definitely trying to put > substitutions in there. To be fair there is a pronunciations editor But it > doesn't let you change a lot of things really. > > Given that Apple has moved towards using third party voices, I wonder if > they've given up the development of Alex. I find the voice nauseating now to > be honest. I used to use it inSnow Leopard but in Lion I just couldn't > tolerate him. I'd rather use Nuance Daniel, and that's saying something. > > Gordon > > On 29 Aug 2011, at 12:03, Nicolai Svendsen wrote: > > I agree. He sounds a bit beefier in Lion than he did on Snow Leopard. in SL, > I actually quite liked him, and I still do in 10.7, but he just sounds a lot > rougher to me than he used to sound. > > As for numbers, Apple still tries to control this. An example is that if you > have a certain amount of numbers, Apple will interpret them as bar codes. An > engineer even said as much, and I find this kind of wrong to assume. > > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> > > To reply to this post, please address your message to > mac-access@mac-access.net > > You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at > either the list's own dedicated web archive: > <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> > or at the public Mail Archive: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. > Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> > > The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and > worm-free! > > Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting > the list website at: > <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
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