[Blindapple] Apple Talk Reader?

Fri Oct 20 14:08:36 EDT 2017

Thank you jeff. Armed with this knowledge, I should do better next time. *grins*

From: BlindApple [mailto:blindapple-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Jeff Weiss
Sent: October 19, 2017 8:01 PM
To: Blind Apple Discussions
Subject: Re: [Blindapple] Apple Talk Reader?

Now, if you are reading very long files, like the issues of Open Apple, it will take a couple of minutes for the file to load.

If you are reading the Apple Talk issues, most of the articles are much shorter and should load and start reading quickly.

You can press space to start and stop the reading.  When the reading is stopped, you can review the screen, or enter letters to change the speech:

s for some punctuation

m for most punctuation

f for fast or compressed speech

e for expanded or slow speech

Here are the instructions for the Apple Talk reader which began to be used in october/November, 1988.  Some features are not available in earlier versions of Apple Talk Reader.

           Apple Talk Reader

             by Jeff Weiss

                    Revised October, 1988

                  Changes and New Features

     If you have an Apple 2e with an 80-column card or an

Apple 2c, Apple Talk reader will now use the 80-column

screen when displaying text.  If no 80-column card is

present in the aux slot, the 40-column display will be used.

If you want to use the forty column screen, or if you

are using an external speech synthesizer, deleting line

180 from Apple Talk Reader will cause the program to

use the standard 40 column screen.

     There is now a new option for reading the Apple Talk

articles.  When Apple Talk Reader is run, you will be

asked if you want to "read entire article without stopping."

Answer Y for yes and the entire article will be read without

pausing!  Warning!  The new versions of the Textalker speech

program allow any key that is pressed to silence the speech.

If you think that you accidentally pressed an extra key, immediately

press the space bar!  This will turn the speech back on!

In this continuous reading mode, you can pause the reading

by pressing the space bar.  When you are prompted "Space. "

the E, F, S, M, and B options can be used.  Pressing one

of these options or pressing the space bar will resume the reading.

     There is now a "back page" option at the "Space."

prompt.  Pressing letter B will allow you to go back and

re-read the previous page.  Also, when printing lines

of text on paper, you will be prompted to enter a left margin.

Enter 0 for no left margin--or an integer upto 40 to cause

the program to space over accordingly.

     When the program is run, you will be presented

the file selection menu.  The first choice in the menu

is "Type in File Name".  If you press return, you can then

type in any file name.

     The second choice is to catalog a disk.  Pressing

return will allow either drive to be cataloged.  Be sure

that the last drive that you catalog is the drive that you 

will be reading from.

     The remaining choices in the menu are all of the

articles in this issue of Apple Talk.  Each file name will

be presented, and you can use the up arrow key and the down

arrow key to move through the list of articles.  When you

find the article that you want to read, simply press return.

The program will remember which file you read last.  After

you read an article and come back to the menu, the next

option or text file will be presented.  The instructions

will not be spoken again; however, they are printed

on the top four lines of the screen.  This should facilitate

reading several articles in sequence.

If you are using an Apple ][ Plus or other computer which does

not have the up and down arrow keys, the control j is the same

as the down arrow and the control k is the same as the

up arrow.  Letter D can be used to jump down ten places

in the article menu.  Likewise, letter U can be used

to jump up ten article names.

                 Reading a screen at a time

     When you are reading a text file, a screen full of text

is displayed and you will be prompted "SPACE." for

more text.  Letter B will go back a page if you want to re-read

a page.  Pressing s will change to some punctuation mode.

M will enable most punctuation mode.  E will change to the

expanded or slow rate of speech.  F will change to the fast

rate of speech.  You can also use the textalker review

commands to review the text on the screen.  The text will 

not scroll off the screen until you press the space bar.  

The control x can be used to silence the printing on the

screen; however, the prompt "SPACE." will be given when

the screen is full.  Control c can be pressed to stop

the reading of an article.  Warning!  when using DOS 3.3,

control c or reset should never be pressed when the disk

drive is spinning!  This could cause damage to your disk!

                      The Options Menu

     After you finish reading an article, the following

menu of choices will be presented:

N NEXT ARTICLE

S SAME ARTICLE

P PRINT

R REVIEW LINES

Q QUIT

     The N option allows you to read the next article

from the list.  When you hear the name of the article, simpley

press return if that is the article you want.

     The S option allows you to re-read the same article

that you just heard.  Since the article is still in memory,

it can be read again without the delay caused when you load

material from disk.

                      The Review Option

     Pressing letter R to review lines will allow you to

hear any of the lines in the current article.  You will

be prompted to enter a line number and press return.

When the line you select is spoken, the up and down arrows

can be used to scroll through the text.  The left and right

arrows will allow you to spell the current line.  Speech

parameters can still be controlled by pressing the letters

S, M, E, and F--which control punctuation and speech rate.

Letter I will tell you the number of the line you are reading.

Letter L will give you the length of the line being read.

                      The Print Option

     Letter p will allow you to either print selected lines

of text, or you can save selected lines of text to disk using

the append command.  When printing, you will be prompted

for the printer slot.  Specify 0 or 3 to have the entire article

printed to the screen without pausing.  Specifying a number

from 1 through 7 will assume that a printer or other device

is in that slot.  You will be prompted to enter a left margin.

Any number from 0 through 40 can be used.

     When saving a file to disk, the file is opened, closed,

and then your text is appended to that file.  You will be

prompted for the drive number to be used.  After saving

text to a drive other than the one which contains the Apple

Talk disk, the default drive will be changed back to

the one containing the Apple Talk disk.

                       The Quit Option

     Q stands for quit.  The program asks "Are you sure?"

Answer Y for yes and you will be left in basic.  If you

would like, you could then run any of the programs on

the Apple Talk disk.

Jeff Weiss

From: JM Casey <mailto:crystallogic at ca.inter.net>  

Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2017 2:05 PM

To: 'Blind Apple Discussions' <mailto:blindapple at bluegrasspals.com>  

Subject: Re: [Blindapple] Apple Talk Reader?

Hey. Yes, I was able to select articles with the cursor. But is Echo supposed to start speaking when you hit enter on an article/after it reads from the disk? Because I waited for quite some time in about three or four different cases and heard nothing. That’s why I was wondering if there was some other step I was missing.

From: BlindApple [mailto:blindapple-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Jeff Weiss
Sent: October 19, 2017 2:28 PM
To: Blind Apple Discussions
Subject: Re: [Blindapple] Apple Talk Reader?