05-06-2009, 05:55 PM | #1 |
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Will Kindle DX read aloud PDFs?
I've scanned the Kindle DX documentation and can not understand whether or not the new Kindle DX text to speech feature would work with a PDF. Does anyone have any details on this feature?
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05-06-2009, 10:15 PM | #2 |
Sir Penguin of Edinburgh
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Probably not.
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05-06-2009, 10:27 PM | #3 |
Wizard
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Doesn't the Kindle 2 read aloud all supported formats? I would think the Kindle DX would do the same
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05-06-2009, 10:37 PM | #4 |
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I guess I'll have to wait and see.
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05-06-2009, 10:47 PM | #5 |
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05-06-2009, 10:49 PM | #6 |
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Excellent point. I'll do so and report back.
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05-06-2009, 11:07 PM | #7 |
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There's nothing in the manual to indicate that Text-to-Speech would *not* work on a text PDF, so there's no reason to believe it wouldn't.
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05-06-2009, 11:38 PM | #8 | |
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The Kindle DX Product Link in Alex's front page news reveals that:
Quote:
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05-07-2009, 12:00 AM | #9 | |
reader
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Quote:
A reason for thinking that text to speech might not work for PDFs is that getting the text in the right order for speech is essentially the "reflow" problem (although images and most formatting can be ignored). We already know that reflow can work much of the time, and is included in Adobe Digital Editions that Amazon has licensed for the DX. This might be good enough, given that read aloud is "experimental", but my guess is that Amazon has not implemented even this special case of reflow for PDFs. Having said how hard, in general, PDFs are to read aloud, I need to add that Adobe Reader (for Desktops) has a read aloud option but with four reading modes based on the type of PDF. |
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05-07-2009, 12:38 AM | #10 | |
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Quote:
That fact that text-to-speech may not always follow the flow "correctly" (I don't expect multicolumn support) doesn't mean it won't work. I see your point, but they go out of their way to note the numerous things that don't work in PDFs, so I don't know why they would neglect to mention this one. (Although the inability to hilight and annotate PDF is almost hidden.) |
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05-07-2009, 12:43 AM | #11 | |||
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Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Last edited by wallcraft; 05-07-2009 at 12:45 AM. |
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05-07-2009, 03:28 AM | #12 |
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Definitely not, coz PDFs text-to-speech recognition needs a very processor, whereas it's not there in Kindle DX
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05-07-2009, 10:10 AM | #13 |
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I just called Amazon support. I got passed around until I found an engineer. The quick answer, as I suspected, is "no" their text to speech feature will not work with a PDF. It makes me less tempted to by the DX. <g>
Last edited by JoeC; 05-10-2009 at 01:18 PM. Reason: typo |
05-07-2009, 10:15 AM | #14 |
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One work around is to convert the PDF to MOBI. Unfortunately, Amazon won't do the conversion for you if you have a KDX (as they will for the K1 and K2) - but Windows MobiPocket Reader does a similar job and there are other tools that can do this.
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05-07-2009, 10:21 AM | #15 |
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Excellent thought wallcraft. Thanks.
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