Frequently Asked Questions

[Jim Bretti]

1. What is scroll navigation
2. Why is there no stop button
3. Is Batch File Conversion available?
4. Can floating toolbar display automatically when TA minimized?
5. Are additional spell check dictionaries available?
6. How do I speak all articles aloud or to file?
7. How do I configure TextAloud to speak new articles automatically?
8. Can TextAloud ignore clipboard updates from specified applications?
9. How do I configure TextAloud to speak text in other applications?
10. Can I control how often the clipboard prompt is displayed?
11.Why aren't all Microsoft voices available in TextAloud?
12.Can I configure voices to use the same volume when using voice change tags?
13.How do I backup and restore pronunciation dictionaries?

[Jim Bretti]

Scroll navigation is a new feature in TextAloud 4. Similar to the Skip entries under the TextAloud Navigation menu, scroll navigation allows you to skip to different positions in an article while speaking is in progress. But unlike the Navigation menu entries, scroll navigation lets you skip to an exact position.

Here is how it works. While TextAloud is speaking an article, use your your keyboard or the scrollbar in the display to start scrolling. When TextAloud detects any 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. 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.

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[Jim Bretti]

There is no Stop button in TextAloud 4, there is only a Pause button. When speaking text aloud, if you want to stop speaking you just click Pause. When speaking is paused in TextAloud 4, the pause behaves exactly as if you clicked a Stop button, with the exception you have the option to Resume speaking from where you paused.

This is different than how pausing works in TextAloud 3. In TextAloud 3, pausing essentially locks the user interface, requiring you to press Stop before you can do anything else. In TextAloud 4, Pause and Stop are combined into one action. Pausing does not lock the user interface, you simply have the option to Resume. We felt that combining these redundant actions into one action helped to simplify the user interface.

When paused, Resume is enabled until you change articles, or modify the text in the current article. When the text changes, you can no longer resume, but you can use the Speak From Cursor option in the dropdown attached to the Speak button.

Pause/Resume is currently not supported when writing audio files. So if you use the To File button to write articles to audio files, the pause button changes to a Stop button. Pause is only available when speaking text aloud.

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[Jim Bretti]

A batch file conversion utility was added in TextAloud version 4.0.58. You can launch the utility by clicking Batch File Converter under the TextAloud Control Center menu. If the utility does not appear try updating to the current version of TextAloud.

In addition, TextAloud 4 supports a few some different ways of configuring the user interface. You can configure the user interface mode as Single Article, Multi Article or Batch.

By default, TextAloud 4 users the Multi Article Mode user interface. If you would like to run TextAloud in Single Article mode or Batch mode, use the User Interface Mode menu entry, under the Control Center menu.

So TextAloud 4 has a standalone batch file converter utility available starting in version 4.0.58, and also supports a batch user interface for the main window.

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[Jim Bretti]

There are settings available in TextAloud Settings that allow you to control the display of the Floating Toolbar and the TextAloud main window. In TextAloud Settings, select General Application Options. In the Floating Toolbar section the following checkboxes can be used:

• Minimize TextAloud window when Floating Toolbar displayed

• Show Floating Toolbar when TextAloud minimized

• Restore TextAloud window when Floating Toolbar closed

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[Jim Bretti]

The TextAloud install includes a spell check dictionary for American English. Additional spell check dictionaries are available at http://www.addictivesoftware.com/dl-dictionaries.htm. You'll find dictionaries for other languages as well as some specialized dictionaries such as technical and legal.

To install a dictionary, download any of the dictionaries http://www.addictivesoftware.com/dl-dictionaries.htm to your machine. Each dictionary download is a single zip file. Run TextAloud 4, and from the menu, click Help -> Open Data Folder. Unzip the contents of the downloaded zip files into this folder, then exit and restart TextAloud to pick up the new dictionary(s).

You can configure which dictionaries are active from the TextAloud main window ... click Control Center -> Configure Spell Check.

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[Jim Bretti]

TextAloud 4 does not have separate buttons / menu entries for speaking single single articles and speaking multiple articles. Speaking all articles is now controlled by settings available under the Control Center menu, or in the dropdown menus attached to the Speak and To File buttons.

The options to look for are called "Auto Continue When Speaking Aloud" and "Auto Continue When Speaking To File"

Both settings are unchecked by default. Selecting the settings causes TextAloud to continue to the next article when finished with the current article. So to speak all articles to file, select Control Center -> Auto Continue When Speaking To File", select the first article, and click the "To File" button.

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[Jim Bretti]

You can configure TextAloud to speak new articles automatically, the option is located in TextAloud Settings. Click the Settings button to display TextAloud Settings, and in the left panel, select Article Options. The option to speak new articles automatically is a checkbox on this panel, under the heading "When articles are added"

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[Jim Bretti]

It is possible to configure TextAloud to ignore clipboard updates from specific applications. We'll make this easier to configure in future updates, but here's how to do it:

1. Verify the option "Prompt to copy text from the clipboard" is enabled in TextAloud Settings -> Clipboard Options.

2. Copy some text to the clipboard from an application you want TextAloud to ignore.

3. When the clipboard prompt is displayed, click the More Options link, located in the bottom right of the prompt. This will expand the prompt to display some additional options.

4. Select the checkbox "Always ignore clipboard updates from ....'"

5. Click the Ignore button to ignore the clipboard update.

If later you decide you would like to TextAloud to process clipboard updates from an ignored application, display TextAloud Settings and select Clipboard Options in the left panel. In the tab control at the bottom of the Clipboard Options panel, select "Ignore Applications". Then locate the application in the ignore list, select it, and click the Remove button.

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[Jim Bretti]

There are several ways to do this, each using different configuration options in TextAloud Settings. Here is an overview of the different options.

Article Options - Automatically speak new articles
You can configure TextAloud to automatically speak new articles as they are added. In TextAloud Settings, click Article Options in the left panel. On the Article Options panel, look for the label "When articles are added", and beneath that, select the checkbox labeled "Speak New Articles Automatically".

Clipboard Options
There are a couple ways you can configure text to be spoken as text is copied to the clipboard. In TextAloud Settings, click Clipboard Options in the left panel. If you have TextAloud configured to speak new articles automatically (above), you can set the Default Action on the Clipboard Options panel to "Add New Article". Or, you can set the Default Action to Speak Text. With Speak Text set as the default action, TextAloud will speak text from the clipboard without creating TextAloud articles.

There are several other options available on this panel to allow you control when clipboard updates are ignored, and whether or not you would like to be prompted before TextAloud performs any actions on text copied to the clipboard. If the checkbox "Prompt to copy text from the clipboard" is not selected, TextAloud will perform the default action without prompting you. If prompting is enabled, you can pick the action you want to perform whenever TextAloud detects a clipboard update.

If you disable the clipboard prompt, it may be convenient to disable "Watch Clipboard", and enable it only when you want clipboard copies to trigger the default action. You can toggle the Watch Clipboard setting in the tray icon popup menu, as well as the Control Center menu in the TextAloud main window. There is also a system wide hotkey available that allows you to toggle Watch Clipboard on and off.

Mouse Speak Options
Mouse speak options apply to text you highlight using your mouse. In TextAloud Settings, click Mouse Speak Options in the left panel. Mouse speak options are very similar to the Clipboard Options described above. Like Watch Clipboard above, there is a option called "Watch Mouse" that controls when this feature is enabled. You can toggle the Watch Mouse setting in the tray icon popup menu, as well as the Control Center menu in the TextAloud main window. There is also a system wide hotkey available that allows you to toggle Watch Mouse on and off.

System Wide Hotkeys
You can create system wide hotkeys that allow you to select text in other applications, and either speak the text or import into TextAloud articles. You have the option of configuring an Import Text hotkey together with the option to automatically speak new articles, or you can configure one or more hotkeys to speak selected text. A specific voice can be assigned to a Speak or Import Text Hotkey, so you have the option of creating multiple hotkeys for these actions, each using a different voice.

Floating Toolbar
The TextAloud floating toolbar can be displayed from the Control Center menu in the TextAloud main window. The floating toolbar provides functionality very similar to system wide hotkeys. You can use the Speak button on the floating toolbar to speak text in other windows, along with an Add Article button. The voice dropdown on the Floating Toolbar makes it very easy to speak text or add articles using different voices. As mentioned above, the Add Article button can be used with the option to speak articles automatically.

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[Jim Bretti]

By default, TextAloud monitors the Windows Clipboard and displays a small prompt on each clipboard update. In addition, some applications update the clipboard at unpredictable times, resulting in TextAloud clipboard prompts when the clipboard has not actually been changed. There are several options available to limit how often the TextAloud clipboard prompt is displayed.

Display TextAloud Settings and select Clipboard Options in the left panel. Here are the options to look at.

Ignore Clipboard Text less than x characters - Sets the minimum amount of text on the Windows Clipboard that TextAloud will recognize. Set this to a value high enough so that TextAloud will ignore routine copy and paste operations between windows.

Ignore Clipboard Updates if text has not changed - Select this checkbox to prevent TextAloud from acting on the same text multiple times. TextAloud will recognize clipboard updates only if the clipboard text actually changes. This option frequently helps with applications that make unpredictable updates to the Windows clipboard.

Ignore Clipboard Updates when speaking aloud - Select this option to ignore clipboard updates while TextAloud is currently speaking aloud.

Ignore Clipboard Updates when creating audio files - Select this option to ignore clipboard updates while TextAloud is currently writing audio files.

You can also configure TextAloud to ignore clipboard updates from specified applications. See the post at viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8498&p=19528#p19528.

Finally, you can disable clipboard prompts completely by turning the Watch Clipboard option off. You can toggle the option on and off as needed. The Watch Clipboard option is available in the TextAloud main window under the Control Center menu, and in the popoup menu displayed when you right click the TextAloud tray icon. You can also create a system wide hotkey to toggle the Watch Clipboard option on and off.

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[Jim Bretti]

We see this issue starting in Windows 10. Windows 10 supports a new set of voices called "mobile voices". The voices are also referred to as "universal voices" or "onecore voices". These voices use a new speech api.

TextAloud currently supports the Sapi5 speech interface only, and does not have access to the new voices. The voices supported by Sapi5 are now referred to as "desktop voices".

The voices that display in Windows Settings (Settings -> Time and Language -> Speech) are mobile voices. Sapi5 voices you purchase from NextUp will not appear in the voice dropdown, and the dropdown will normally contain some voices not available in TextAloud. Some voices, such as Microsoft David, are available as both mobile and desktop voices, and will appear in Windows Settings and TextAloud.

If you install a Windows 10 language pack, voices included in the language pack are the new mobile voices. It is not currently possible to get desktop versions of these voices for TextAloud and other Sapi5 applications.

We plan to add support for Windows Mobile voices in future versions of TextAloud.

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[Jim Bretti]

You can use the Voice Options panel in TextAloud Settings to normalize the volume used by different voices. In TextAloud Settings, click Voice Options in the left panel. The volume slider on this panel sets the volume for individual voices. Select each voice in your voice list, click the Test button to speak some sample text, and adjust the volume slider for the voice. The idea is to use the maximum volume setting for voices that speak at softer volumes, then use lower volume settings for your other voices. Once you have all voices speaking at the same volume, you can use the volume slider on the TextAloud main window to adjust the volume for the TextAloud application. With some experimenting you should be able to get the volumes pretty close.

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[Jim Bretti]

TextAloud does not currently have any built in backup/restore capability for pronunciation dictionaries, but it is pretty simple to do this manually.

To locate the pronunciation dictionary files, click Help -> Open Data Folder from the TextAloud menu. In the folder displayed, you will see a folder named "Dictionaries". Each of your pronunciation dictionaries is saved as a .chl file in this folder. So if you have two pronunciation dictionaries in TextAloud, the Dictionaries folder will contain two .chl files. The names for the chl files will correspond to the dictionary names displayed in Pronunciation Dictionary Maintenance.

You can backup your dictionaries simply by keeping a backup of this Dictionaries folder. If you ever need to restore an individual dictionary, just replace the dictionary's chl file with your backup copy. Note that the TextAloud Pronunciation Dictionary Maintenance dialog should be closed when replacing files in the Dictionaries folder.

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