Speech Plug-In

for Netscape Navigator
by Bill Tudor

Version 1.0
MacOS 680x0 and MacOS Power PC

Copyright (C) 1996 All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

  1. Installation
  2. System Requirements
  3. Creating World Wide Web (html) pages that Speak
  4. Speech MIME types
  5. Notes and More Information

Installation

Run Netscape Navigator and open the file named "example.html". You will hear Speech.

Now Netscape can talk!

System Requirements


The Speech Plug-in currently requires a Power Mac or 680x0 Mac running system 7.0 or later with Apple's English Text-To-Speech software (the Speech Manager) installed. The Speech Plug-in runs native on all MacOS computers.

"English Text-To-Speech" can be obtained free from Apple Computer, Inc. You will find it at their ftp site ftp://ftp.support.apple.com. As of this writing, the latest version was 1.4.1. The English Text-To-Speech software requires a Macintosh or Power Macintosh running system 6.0.7 or later with 300Kb of free RAM and about 5Mb of free disk space.

Creating World Wide Web (html) Pages that Speak


Setting up the files (pages):

To create a speakable web pages, just enter the following html code in your WWW document:

<EMBED SRC="example.spc" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=10>

Replace the text "example.spc" with the name of a text file that will contains your speakable message. The filename should have the extension ".spc". The width and height parameters do not make any difference, since nothing is displayed on the screen, however, they must be present (and be non-zero) so that Netscape can calculate the size of your page.

Now just create a plain ASCII text file with the name you used in the example above, and when your page is loaded into Netscape Navigator, the text will be spoken.

Setting up the server:

The Speech Plug-In uses a MIME type of "text/x-speech", so you need to setup your Web Server so that ".spc" files are identified (i.e., "served up") as "text/x-speech". Different Web servers accomplish this in different ways. Contact your Web Master or Internet Service Provider (ISP) for information on how you can add your own personal MIME type so that files ending in ".spc" will be served up as "text/x-speech" rather than "text/plain" (or some other type used by your server).

On many systems, the MIME type mapping can be accomplished by creating a file named ".htaccess" containing the line "AddType text/x-speech .spc".

If your server side is not properly setup, users visiting your page will not hear speech. Instead, they will probably be informed that information of type "text/plain" is being sent to them.

Note that when you test your system on your local computer, everything will work fine. This is because in the absence of a Web server, all files loaded are, in effect, "unknown" types. In this case, Netscape Navigator will revert to its CLIENT side mappings. Client side mappings are setup using "Helper" applications or, as in the case of Speech, by plugins.

Speech MIME Types

The Speech Plug-in recognizes the following MIME types: The Talker MIME types enable the Speech Plug-in to Speak text provided by sites designed to work with the Talker plugin from MVP Solutions, Inc. You should use "text/x-speech" in documents that you create, however, since this MIME type follows conventions that identify the data. You can learn more about the Talker plugin by visiting MVP Solutions.

Notes & More Information


There may be a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page located at http://www.albany.net/~wtudor/speech_faq.html regarding the Speech plug-in. Please visit this site before sending any questions to me via email since I can better answer questions on the FAQ page then individually. Of course, if you do not find your question there, then send me a note at wtudor@albany.net.

The Speech Plug-in is provided free for non-commercial use as an example of what can be done on the Web using Netscape Navigator Plug-ins. As such, this software is provided "as is".

The Speech Plug-in is non-commercial, un-tested, software. It may contain bugs. It is not guarenteed to work properly on all systems.

There may be more information on this plug-in, as well as some others, at my web site which is located at http://www.albany.net/~wtudor. You may also use my Web site as a test site after installing the Speech Plug-in, since many of my pages are setup to talk to you.

You can download Netscape 2.0 by visiting their web site at http://www.netscape.com.

Send comments to me at: wtudor@albany.net
Speech Plug-in is Copyright (C) 1996 by Bill Tudor