- Read web pages with Reader. Some web pages are electronic books,
and others are rich in text. You can save
one of these pages using your web browser file save function. Later
you can type in this file name and path for Reader to read. Reader
will detect the file extensions: .htm and .html, and attempt to strip out
all html tags, thereby reading only the text. It preserves the original file as a html document.
- Create a formatted text file of jokes or personal self-help messages and have
Reader index it for speaking a random phrase any time the space bar is pressed.
- Record Reader’s output to a tape recorder. Read an electronic book and set Reader’s maximum continuous read time to 44 minutes for a 90 minute tape. Reader
will read for 44 minutes, then pause allowing you to change or reverse the tape, pressing the space bar starts it reading again.
- Set Reader’s speaking speed to twice normal or faster, and experiment with accelerated learning by listening to informational text files.
- Set Reader’s volume very low and experiment with subliminal learning. Combine
this and the first suggestion and use earphones, and drag and drop up to 10 files to be read.
- Set up a presentation. Set Reader’s read mode to ‘G’ and it will
read a series of text files sequentially. It pauses between each file
waiting for you to press the Space Bar. You can add your comments or
speech between the files. You could set up a fake dialogue between you
and Reader.
- Use Reader as a proof reading tool and a study aid. As Reader reads
a text file, it displays the sentence it is speaking, and the next
sentence to be spoken. It is sometimes easier to retain information
or proof read, if you can see and hear the words at the same time.
Many transpositions are caught this way. Dyslexics like this feature.
- Reader will read Clipboard text. You can set it to automatically read
the clipboard any time another application changes it, so as you compile a
document in a word processor, you can highlight and copy text to the clipboard,
Reader will then read it. You can also manually read the Clipboard using
Reader’s hot keys to read the text. Many people use this feature to
proof read documents as they are prepared. Reader reads this type of text
in the background, so you can follow the reading in the document or continue with other
work.
- As a further study aid, you can have Reader extract some sentences
and store them to an extract file for later use. Use this feature to
extract important bits of information from a large file.
- You can tell Reader to store it’s phonetics to a special file instead of
reading verbally. You can then rename and amend the phonetics file, and have
Reader read it. Usefull for fine tuning how Reader speaks.
- Use Reader’s search hot keys to locate a piece of text in a file. This may be
useful when trying to extract only pertinent information from a large text file.
- Reader’s bookmark feature lets you set a bookmark, then return to
that position in the file later in the read, or even after quitting the
read and loading the file again some other time.
- As a talking aid you can type a sentence and hear it spoken immediately,
then type another. The input field is cleared automatically. Toddlers could
use this to learn pronunciation of letters or words. To save
keystrokes, you can change to talking aid mode and use a text file with 300
sentences or words.
- In the input field enter in only enough letters to identify the sentence or word, and
Reader will find the phrase and speak it for you. Once again the input
field is cleared automatically, for the next search.
- Since you can get Reader to read a file by launching Reader with a file
name as a parameter, you can read a file from within any other application
that supports file launching. This means you could create a talking Web Page
in Netscape or IExplorer, by setting up Reader as a helper application. This
could be useful for sales presentations. See the webpage.txt file in the
download file for more information (new in version 2C).
- Reader can also be launched using a text string in the command line. It
will read that text. With Eudora 3.0, users have set up a filter function so
that Reader will either read all EMail messages, or at least announce that
EMail has come, including the From and Subject. This text launch feature
may be useful in other applications that can launch another application.
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