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Old 01-29-2010, 10:27 PM   #2
fjtorres
Grand Sorcerer
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Posts: 11,732
Karma: 128354696
Join Date: May 2009
Location: 26 kly from Sgr A*
Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000
For what it is worth, I think that:
The main problem with on-the-fly TTS is it has to be very, *very* good before it can be of any use. Anything less becomes an annoyance and quickly wears out its welcome even among those who ike the idea.
I've tried TTS with MS Reader, Kindle, and other computer apps and just about the only setup that I've found tolerable for more than a few minutes is the AT&T Natural Voices Audrey on MS Reader. Kindle and the other systems suffer from overly artificial inflexions and fail to pronounce too many words too often; it disrupts the narrative flow.

I don't think it is a total waste but I do think it is more trouble than its worth. For now.

Given the current state of hardware/software, I think a utility that converts ebooks to audiofiles on a PC and then combines the audio and text for synchronized playback might be more effective than on-the-fly TTS. Given that ePub allows for embedded multimedia, that might be a better solution.
Or not.
<Shrug.>
I would rather see more effort go to improved typographics, more/better legacy format support (lit?, prc, pdb), better parsing of document formats (rtf, doc, txt) in areas like centered text, chapter detection, etc.
In other words, more of what makes the PB360 better than the other existing 5" readers.

Oh, yeah: a few commercial dictionaries would be welcome. Don't have to be free, just available as an option to hunting over the net for PD stuff to convert. Not all Pocketbook buyers are going to want to go on a scavenger hunt for dictionaries; it would be a shame for such robust dictionary support to go to waste for lack of readily available western dictionaries.

Last edited by fjtorres; 01-29-2010 at 10:46 PM.
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