The Reading Machine is a solution for paced reading with electronic texts. Readers can choose from three reading methods: left to right eye training, vertically scrolling text, and book-style reading. They can also choose to hear the text read aloud when using the book reading method.
The Reading Machine allows users to select the reading speed, font, colors, and layout that best fit their needs, and font and color settings can be saved as shortcuts for applying later with just one click.
After reading, students can get immediate feedback with computer-generated tests. These consist of fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice (numbers and phrases), and paragraph-ordering questions. The Reading Machine creates the questions on-the-fly by analyzing the current text, and gives users visual and voiced feedback.
For added convenience, The Reading machine offers bookmarks and section markers to save places, text searching, and light-weight file utilities to remove line breaks and HTML tags.
Help is never far away with the reader's choice of Voice or Balloon help for quick explanations, and a built-in User Guide for deeper contemplations.
Requirements
Mac OS 7.0 or later
4 Megabytes of free RAM
68020 or higher processor or PowerPC
The Reading Machine makes good use of speech synthesis (Macintalk/Speech Manager/Text-to-Speech), but does not require it.
Directions
Basic operation:
Choose a demonstration text by pressing the Open button.
(The Open button has an icon of a book and disk.)
Choose the reading speed and method you prefer.
Press the Start button to begin.
(The Start button has an eye icon.)
Of course, you'll probably want to set the font and colors to match your personal tastes, and adjust the size of the text and the reading area to suit your needs--
Full instructions are located in the built-in User Guide.
Enjoy your reading!
Purchasing
The Reading Machine may be purchased by using secure web page, e-mail, FAX, postal mail, or phone.
The easiest way to register is to start up The Reading Machine and click the "Register" button, letting the software walk you through the process.
Alternatively:
To register by web page, go to www.kagi.com/curry and follow the link to the secure web site.
To register by e-mail, FAX, or postal mail, use the "Register Curry Software" application.
To register by phone, follow the directions in The Reading Machine's user guide or the registration walk-through section.
New in Version 1.0.3:
Corrects a pronunciation problem and allows the user to skip through the opening screens by holding down the mouse button.
New in Version 1.0.2:
Corrects some problems with the Style Shortcuts and Book reading method.
New in Version 1.0.1:
Shows the correct desktop icon and makes some other packaging changes.
(If you are updating from Version 1.0, and The Reading Machine icon in the Finder still has an "SC" logo, rebuild your desktop file by holding down the Option and Apple keys while your computer is starting up.)
Updates
From time to time, a new version of The Reading Machine with superior features may be made available.
Check the web page at www.kagi.com/curry for the latest version of The Reading Machine and other software.
(The current version of The Reading Machine is 1.0.3. If a newer version were released, it would have a higher number, such as 1.0.4 or 1.1.)
Legal Notice
This software is provided with no warranties and is to be used at the user's disgression. In no event will the author be responsible for any claim.
The software components, such as design, code, graphics, and sounds, are copyrighted and may not be used without permission.
Contact the author for information about re-distribution or commercial publication.
