Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!ksr
From: ksr@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Kenneth S Redler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Why won't/doesn't Apple support MacinTalk???
Message-ID: <11259@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 30 Nov 88 20:03:32 GMT
References: <6135@zodiac.UUCP> <71150@felix.UUCP> <193@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk> <11197@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <2183@iscuva.ISCS.COM>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: ksr@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Kenneth S Redler)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 24

In article <2183@iscuva.ISCS.COM> jimc@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Jim Cathey) writes:
|In article <11197@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> Peter.G.Merchant@dartmouth.edu (Peter Merchant) writes:
||I remember a program called "SmoothTalker" many years back...
|
|I listened to SmoothTalker once, and found it to be most irritating.  I
|much preferred the honest 'computerese' of Macintalk.  Smoothtalker's
|accent was very, umm, ingratiating (??) sounding.  About as much fun to
|listen to for extended periods of time as baby talk (snookums).  Made
|me want to club it in the face!  It also had only one inflection
|pattern.  Start high and proceed low through the sentence, with a few
|slight wobbles near the end (kind of like when you run out of breath at
|the end of a sentence).  Gack.  Gave the word 'smooth' a bad name.
|Anybody else have this reaction to it?
|

Yes.  It also seemed to lack the same "future" features as Macintalk,
such as the female voice; these teasers were present in the menus, but
grayed out.  I found the speech patterns...well...plaintive.

-Ken

================================================================================
 Ken Redler                                           ksr@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
================================================================================