talking ebooks
- From: Eric Eldred <ericeldred@[redacted]>
- Subject: talking ebooks
- Date: 23 Oct 2001 12:10:30 EDT
a couple of remarks on talking ebooks:
1. Audiobooks on vinyl or tape or otherwise can be converted to
MP3 format digital files and then played on a portable MP3 player,
either on solid state disks or CD-RW. I will leave the legal
questions involved here to the lawyers. But there are already
hundreds or thousands of such books available from UseNet groups.
2. The World Wide Web Consortium promotes a standard for markup
of text files to enable the files to be sent through a text to
speech device. This markup greatly improves the usual computer-
sounding speech. But the markup must be manually applied and
takes effort not required with the MP3 method. Can somebody
with experience of it comment on this process?
3. I have previously on this list noted the need for a device
that combined optical scanning of text with speech playback.
The Hewlett-Packard Capshare 510 does the first part of this,
but scans to Adobe PDF instead of to a text file. I would like
to see HP ditch the PDF part and instead use the device to
read the text out loud or save to an MP3 file that can be
edited. This would in my opinion be a great advance for both
unsighted readers as well as dyslexic readers.
4. Each of these combinations of hardware and software would be
much more than "text" or a "book" and so the metaphors of
"ebook" or "etext" are not adequate to describe them any longer.
It is time we got beyond arguing over the vocabulary and started
using technology for meeting real human needs.
____
"Eric" Eric Eldred mailto:ericeldred@[redacted]
http://www.eldritchpress.org "Eldritch Press"