The Mac Reads to You

15.5. The Mac Reads to You So far in this chapter, youve read about the Macs listening ability. But the conversation doesnt have to be one-way; its even easier to make the Mac talk
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The Mac Reads to You15.5. The Mac Reads to YouSo far in this chapter, youve read about the Macs listening ability. But the conversationdoesnt have to be one-way; its even easier to make the Mac talk.Some Mac OS X programs come with their own built-in speaking features.For example,Mail can read your messages a loud; just Control-click (or right-click) inside a messagewindow and, from the pop-up menu, choose Speech Start Speaking. Most Cocoaprograms can speak when you use the Start Speaking Text command in the Servicesmenu. You can add a Speak command in FileMaker Pro scripts. Mac OS Xs Chess andCalculator programs can talk back, too.But thats kid stuff. Truth is, the Mac can read almost anything you like: text that youpass your cursor over, alert messages, menus, and any text document in any program. Itcan speak in your choice of 24 synthesizer voices, ages 8 to 50. The Macs voice comesout of its speakers. Most read with a twangy, charmingly Norwegian accent— all butAlex, who makes his debut in Leopard and sounds scarily like a professional humanvoice-over artist.Note: This reading-text business is not the same thing as the Macs VoiceOver feature.VoiceOver is designed to read everything on the screen, including pop-up menus,buttons, and other controls, to visually impaired Mac fans (and to permit completecontrol, mouse-free, of everything). Details begin on Section 15.5.1.3.15.5.1. Setting Up the Macs VoiceTo configure the way the Mac talks, revisit the Speech pane of System Preferences. Clickthe Text to Speech tab at the top of the window. As you can see in Figure 15-14, you cancontrol which of the Macs voices you want your computer to use, as well as how fast itshould speak.Tip: Five of the voices sing rather than speak. Good News sings to the tune of Pomp andCircumstance, otherwise known as the Graduation March. Bad News sings to the tune ofChopins Prelude in C minor, better known as the Funeral March. Cellos sings to the tuneof Griegs Peer Gynt suite. Pipe Organ sings to the tune of the Alfred Hitchcock TVtheme. Bells sings the typical church-bell carillon melody.In other words, these voicessing whatever words you type to those melodies. (To hear the melody in its entirety, dontuse any punctuation.) Figure 15-14. At the outset, you see only six voices— the ones that sound the most human. Choose More Voices to see the complete list of 22. Then, for 15 minutes of hilarity, try clicking the voices in turn to hear sample sentences. Drag the slider to affect how fast each one speaks. (Clearly, Apples programmers had some fun with this assignment.)Here are all the different occasions when the Mac can talk to you.15.5.1.1. Announce when alerts are displayedIf you turn on this checkbox, you can make the Mac read aloud error messages and alertmessages that may appear on your screen. If you click the Set Alert Options button, youfind these useful controls: • Voice.Use this pop-up menu to specify the voice you want reading your error messages. (It doesnt have to be the same as the standard Mac default voice thats used for other purposes.) • Phrase. Use this pop-up menu to specify which utterance the Mac speaks before the actual error message—for example,Excuse me! The Trash could not be emptied, or Attention! The document could not be printed. If you choose Next in the phrase list or Random from the phrase list from this pop-up menu, youll never hear the same expletive twice. Better yet, choose Edit Phrase List to open a dialog box where you can specify your own words of frustration. (Apple Computer, Inc., is not liable for any trouble you may get into with people in neighboring cubicles.) • Delay. The ostensible purpose of the Talking Alerts feature is to get your attention if youve wandered away from your Mac—mentally or physically. The chances are slim, but an urgent problem might occur that, if left undetected, could land you in trouble. (A 500-page printout brought to its knees by a paper jam comes to mind.) In other words, if youre still sitting in front of your Mac, you may not need the Mac to speak to get your attention; you could simply read the onscreen message. Thats why you can set this slider to make the Mac wait, after the error message appears, for up to a minute before trying to flag you with its voice. That way it wont harangue you unnecessarily. (Click Play for a sense of how long the Mac will delay before speaking.) GEM IN THE ROUGH Talking to Chess If your friends and co-workers are, for some reason, still unimpressed by Mac OS X and your mastery of it, invite them over to watch you play a game of chess with your Mac—by talk ...