TextAloud 4 New Features Updated September 1, 2017

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Brook Phillips
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1 TextAloud 4 New Features Updated September 1, 2017 New User Interface We have reworked the entire user interface and settings dialogs. Here is an overview of the main things to look for. New Settings Dialog Configuration items currently available under the TextAloud 3 Tools menu have all been moved to a new Settings dialog. New Configurable Speak Buttons In TextAloud 3, several individual buttons / menu items are used to control where speaking starts. So in TextAloud 3, there are buttons / menu actions to Speak Article Aloud, Speak Article From Cursor Aloud, Speak Selected Text Aloud, and so on. This has been improved in TextAloud 4. There are now separate buttons, Speak and To File, with associated dropdown menus to control where speaking begins (From Cursor, From Start of Article, etc.). Each button can be configured to work the way you normally use TextAloud, with other options available in the dropdown menu. The Buttons can also be configured to automatically speak a text selection, if text is selected. The configurable speak buttons reduce the number of toolbar buttons required, without losing functionality available in TextAloud 3. Auto Continue to Next Article In TextAloud 3 there is a separate toolbar and separate buttons / actions for speaking single articles and multiple articles. We have removed this complexity in TextAloud 4. In TextAloud 4 instead of a separate set of actions for speaking all articles, there is now an option to automatically continue to the next article. There are two options you can figure, one for speaking text aloud, and another for creating audio files. So in TextAloud 4, you always use the same speak actions. The auto continue checkbox is used to determine whether you speak a single article or multiple articles. The Auto Continue option, along with the configurable speak buttons, significantly simply the user interface. User Interface Modes Under the Control Center menu, you can configure the user interface mode as Single Article, Multi Article or Batch. The current TextAloud 3 Batch File conversion utility is now just a way of operating TextAloud. All TextAloud functionality is available while you re in batch mode. Also, Batch mode is no longer limited to using files only you can add articles in batch mode the same as multi article mode.

2 Speak button configuration settings and auto continue options are configurable by user interface mode. The default speak options settings for Batch Mode are to begin speaking from the start of the first article, and auto continue to the next article. New Floating Toolbar The floating toolbar was completely redesigned. It is now able to speak selected text in any window, or import selected text into TextAloud articles. All floating toolbar settings are configured from the toolbar itself, configuration options are no longer in TextAloud Settings dialogs. New Theming support (Skins) TextAloud 4 has a new theming engine which replaces and improves on the current Skins feature in TextAloud 3. When selecting a theme, the dialog gives you the option to display only high contrast themes (white text on black background). TextAloud 4 now defaults article colors and word highlighting options to follow the current theme if one is selected. TextAloud 3 did not do this. Low vision users should be able to get going quickly, since you no longer need to manually adjust article foreground colors, background color and highlighting colors. All you need to do is pick a high contrast theme. Speak from Sentence You can now have speaking start from the beginning of the current sentence. If you stop speaking temporarily, you can resume speaking from the start of sentence instead of starting in the middle. Simplified Word Highlighting configuration Word highlighting is now much easier to configure. There is now a Highlighting Style dropdown available that lets you easily pick between different styles. The Default style will automatically adjust highlighting colors based on the current article colors. Changing your article colors will automatically adjust highlighting colors. Predefiined styles include common highlighting colors (yellow, cyan, pink and green) and an underline style available that applies an underline to the current article font. These predefined color / underline styles are simply appled to your current article font and background colors. If you choose Custom as the style, you can configure highlighting like you currently do in TextAloud 3, where you pick individual font styles, foreground color and background color. Scroll Navigation The idea behind scroll navigation is that you can now scroll the TextAloud window while speaking is in progress, using your keyboard or the scrollbar in the display. When TextAloud detects an arrow key, Page Up, Page Down, or any manual scroll of the article window, speaking continues but word highlighting is temporarily suspended. You position the cursor to where you would like to skip, then press the return key or space bar to skip to the new position.

3 If you don t perform a skip within 3 seconds of the last scroll action, the article automatically scrolls to the current speaking position and word highlighting resumes. New Navigations The navigations Repeat Current Sentence and Repeat Current Paragraph were added to the Navigations menu. Article list on the left Under the View menu, you can configure multi article mode to display the article list on the left, or use a tabbed display like we currently do in TextAloud 3. The default is to display the list on the left. With the list displayed on the left, you can arrow up and down in the list, and double click (or press the return key) to start speaking the selected article. There are four buttons available in the main menu to skip between articles (First, Previous, Next, Last), but the buttons are hidden by default. You can make them visible by right clicking the toolbar. Speaking Rules The Settings dialog includes 5 panels of rules you can configure. Many of these rules are for common requests that currently require pronunciation dictionary entries to be created. The automatic pauses, text insertions, and character filtering options currently available in TextAloud 3 are greatly simplified. You can also have voice changes automatically inserted, filter unnecessary newline characters that cause voices to pause, and so on. We plan to add more rules in future updates. Configurable Double Click Shortcut setup now lets you configure how to treat double clicks in the article area. By default, Ctrl+Double Click will perform a Speak from Cursor action, and Ctrl+Alt+Double Click will open pronunciation dictionary maintenance with the currently selected word. Tag Enhancements New Repeat Tag There is a new Repeat Tag. To use it, select some text in the article, and click Insert Tags -> Repeat. You pick the number of times you want the text repeated, and a tag like this is created: {{Repeat=2}}This text is read twice.{{/repeat}} Voice Change Tag There are significant changes to the existing {{Voice}} tag. In TA3, we currently use a Sapi5 xml tag to perform voice changes, like this: <voice required="name = Mike16">This text is spoken with AT&T Mike</voice> The {{Voice}} tag is used in TA3 for Dynamic voice changes, like this: {{Voice=random}}

4 In TextAloud 4, the {{Voice}} tag has been reworked to allow it to be used in place of the Sapi5 xml voice change tag. So in TextAloud 4, the voice change tag for AT&T Mike looks like this: {{Voice=AT&T Mike16}}This text is spoken with AT&T Mike{{/voice}} The difference between the TextAloud and Sapi5 voice change tags is that the TextAloud tag will adjust voice speed, voice pitch and voice volume along with the voice change. Show / Hide Tags There is now an option to hide tags in the text. For now, we decided not to hide the tag completely, but show the first and last character of the tag marker, just so you know it is there. If you select Hide Tags, the tag examples above look like this: {}This text is read twice.{} {}This text is spoken with AT&T Mike{} We could add an option later to hide tags completely if necessary, we ll wait for some feedback. Right to Left Text Support We switched to a completely different control for displaying text, the new text control has support for right to left text, for customers that use Arabic and/or Hebrew voices. For now, the option is available under the Edit menu. We may look at this before release and make it visible / invisible based on whether Arabic / Hebrew voices are installed. There are still issues related to mixing left-to-right and right-to-left text in an article. Pronunciation Dictionary Enhancements The Pronunciation Dictionary utility can now remain open while you use TextAloud. Dictionary Import / Export is now available under the File menu. You can select multiple dictionaries, export the selected dictionaries to.xml files, and reimport them. You can now sort the list of entries for a dictionary by clicking column headings There is a new AutoSave option. By default, Auto Save is turned on, meaning every change you make is automatically saved. If you turn AutoSave off, a Save button appears on the toolbar and File menu, and an Undo option appears under the Edit menu. You can only Undo changes made since your last save. There is currently no Redo option. Under the View menu, you can now hide the Dictionary toolbar and/or the Dictionary Entry toolbar. Integration with Instapaper and Pocket If you sign up for Instapaper ( or Pocket ( you can import bookmarked articles into TextAloud. In TextAloud Settings, when you link to either of these services, you should get the opportunity to create an account. You also need to install an extension in your browser to use the service. Both Instapaper and Pocket have extensions for Chrome, Firefox and IE.

5 You can also install Pocket / Instapaper on your mobile devices. Any content you bookmark on your device can be imported later into TextAloud. New Hotkeys System hotkeys were added to toggle Watch Clipboard and Watch Mouse. The hotkeys include an option to display a confirmation so you know the watch option was turned on or off. Audio meter on Voice Options panel We added an audio meter on the voice options panel to help with voices that don t work well at high Sapi5 volume settings. When you test the voice, you can easily tell if audio is being clipped, and you need to lower the Sapi5 volume for the voice. (This has to do with the Sapi5 volume setting for the voice, not the system volume). File Splitter Enhancement The File Splitter has been updated to support splitting epub documents by chapter. Articles created using split by chapter will have chapter names assigned as article titles. Supported Document Formats TextAloud 4 has support for the FictionBook (.fb2) document format. Audio File Enhancement TextAloud 4 has support for writing Ogg/Vorbis audio files. Clipboard / Mouse Speak New option to ignore clipboard updates / mouse updates while speaking is in progress. Configurable Line Spacing Line spacing in TextAloud articles can now be configured on the Article Font panel. Spacing options are like the ones available in Microsoft Word, including values from 1 (single spacing) to 3 (triple spacing). Features That were dropped Step Navigations This TextAloud 3 feature is very seldom used. We will look at reimplementing in TextAloud 4 if necessary.

6 Article Line Numbering Line numbering is not supported in the new text control we re using. It may be something we can add later, we ll look at it as it comes up. Smooth Scrolling Another feature not directly supported by the new text control. I don t think hard to implement ourselves but for now it is dropped. Skip Forward / Backward by n lines Several Skip actions have been removed from the Navigation menu. We are hoping the new Scroll Navigation feature makes more sense for skipping to text locations, rather than skipping by fixed numbers of lines. Automatic Actions Moved applicable automatic actions to Article Options and Audio File Options basically notification options and a few other things like auto deleting articles, speaking articles as they are imported, etc. Everything else is dropped Character Speaking and Filtering / Pauses and Text Insertions Most commonly used options are now available as Speaking Rules. But speaking rules have been simplified, and some options available in TA3 are no longer supported in TextAloud 4.

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