Text to Speech TTS - Feature Request

[tim13]

I´d like to see TTS features in PDF XChange Viewer! A good realization of this kind is shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnYT5sLNdtg Look at the running highlight! so you always know what is read (good for concentration). Thanks very much for considering...

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi Tim13,

It looks like that is a plugin for Adobe. We are planning to support plugins in V3 of the Viewer so it is a possibility that this will work. There are many variable in cases like this so lets see what V3 plugin functionality brings first shall we?

regards

[waldweibel]

Speech is a regular feature of Adobe Reader. For me (and particularly for visually impaired people) this feature is an urgent necessity.
I really hope there will be a realisation.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi waldweibel,

do you happen to know if PDFAloud is still being made? I went to their website and get something quite different: http://www.pdfaloud.com/
According to this article http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2607 dated Feb 2003 PDFAloud is quite old.

Maybe it's no longer being supported? Do you know of any other Text to Speech plugins that work with Adobe Reader?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I don't know the answer to your question, but the text to voice plugin for Opera has realistic quality speech. If you could get that to work with PDF-XChange (or even with just the Opera plugin) it would be great.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

I think the best solution here would be to find a Text To Speech plugin for Adobe Reader that is currently still supported and when v.3 is ready it is possible this will work as we are planning to support many of the same features where there is no obvious clash in design model and it is feasibel to do so.

hth

[tim13]

Hi there,

The PDF Aloud plug-in I use is part of the package Read&Write Gold from http://www.texthelp.com/ (you cannot buy the plug-in separate, I got an older v8 Read&Write package from Ebay).

Here a video to the newest v10 Read&Write plug-in (for me the v8 plug-in is good enought though): http://www.youtube.com/user/TEXTHELP1?b ... rofFqd2HX8

Side note: Read&Write copies data into the plug-in folder of Acrobat (I use v8). When I copy this data to an Acrobat X trial (the folder in question) it works there also.

So, if the coming XChange plug-in architecture will be compatible to the Acrobat 8 or 10 my Read&Write plug-in should work!

Looking forward to the new XChange Viewer ...

Tim13

[John - Tracker Supp]

We will be providing our own Text to Speech support in version 3 of the PDF-XChange Viewer based on the MS Windows API's freely available.

HTH

[tim13]

Will your own TTS feature provide highlighting (marking what is read aloud)?

[Chris - PDF-XChange]

Hi tim13,

At this point we will need to wait until V3's release to see the extent of functionality included as the development team is hard at work preparing for it's release. No new feature requests are being added until after the release, so let's see how it works and then you can request any improvements at that point.

Best,
Chris