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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: How fast is AmigaBasic?
Message-ID: <1537@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 9-Jul-87 10:43:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.1537
Posted: Thu Jul  9 10:43:02 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 02:54:42 EDT
References: <1348@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk> <22714@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Distribution: world
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 28
Summary: side issue


Not really pertinent, but since there was an AmigaBASIC thread hanging around,
I thought I'd kick in a neat idea that worked.

I typed in a text file that needed to be letter perfect (literally) and was
several pages long.  I live alone, and wouldn't impose the job of helping me
check this dog on anyone else, anyway.

So, I brought up AmigaBASIC (first time in months), and wrote a little routine
with a phonetic, Navy style alphabet (you know, alpha, bravo, charlie), and a
matching list of the printed characters, then fed the text to check in,
converted it character by character to the alphabetic, phonetic equivalent,
and used the say command to read it back to me.  Twenty minutes of programming,
and about 27 minutes per page to go through the text-to-be-checked, and I
cleaned out about two typos per page.  No sweat, except I listened for hours
(and the suspend menu/control key item worked great when I got a bit stir
crazy), and I got what I really trust to be a letter perfect product.

I love Amy, and I thought some of the rest of you might find this idea to be
of interest.  The phonetic forms weren't too hard to develop, and the result
was good enough that I could hear it clearly even when the apartment
maintenance staff were whizzing by my back door on their John Deere lawn
mowers.

I used to read to my kids, nice to have a computer read to me as I (re)enter
my second childhood, soggy brain cells and all!  ;-)

Kent, the man from xanth.