Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!iscuva!jimc
From: jimc@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Jim Cathey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Why won't/doesn't Apple support MacinTalk???
Message-ID: <2183@iscuva.ISCS.COM>
Date: 29 Nov 88 16:30:47 GMT
References: <6135@zodiac.UUCP> <71150@felix.UUCP> <193@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk> <11197@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Organization: ISC Systems Corporation, Spokane, WA
Lines: 26

In article <11197@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> Peter.G.Merchant@dartmouth.edu (Peter Merchant) writes:
>In article <193@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk> jrk@s1.sys.uea.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway CMP RA) writes:
>>OK, I guess Macintalk is dead (and anyway, it's nowhere
>>near the quality I want).  Is any other speech-synthesizing
>>software available for the Mac?  How difficult is it to do?

>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?

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