A future major version of Speech Pack (version 3.0) may include these features:
• a function to make use of the "speech deamons", to allow you to speak
on remote computers;
• no limitation on the number of open channels. But this needs some
major rewriting of the code;
• get and set the modulation;
• convert to allophone code with the SP Voice code function.
• function to obtain an array with all phoneme codes supported by the
speech synthesizer with example words.
• take advantage of the MacinTalk Pro specific features.
• use separate preference file to store registration code.
• when the voicename for SP Voice Open is an empty string use the
code for SP Pick Voice to let the user select a voice.
• make SP Voice sound reduce the sample rate from 22 kHz to
11 kHz.
• use all dictionary data when opening a speech channel, not just one.
• allow to add, remove and change entries in the custom dictionaries.
• add a function to use the phoneme code for soundex searching
(suggested by Mike Weaver), perhaps by doing this:
- use PlainTalk to get phoneme code of sentence/word;
- remove breath-intake and similair characters from the phoneme
code;
- calculate a checksum over the code (CRC?) and return this.
The code for the SP Voice sound function has been prepared to easily include new code to handle future versions of MacinTalk Pro and to add more compression capabilities.
In the mean time Apple continues working on Speech technologies. Future software will include support for more languages. But also the animation of a face belonging to a voice. In that way “Agnes” can have a face on your screen, including facial expressions...
I will NEVER support the original MacinTalk system extension. Because Apple tried to keep MacinTalk compatible with later hardware and software an application using MacinTalk makes the Sound Manager unusable for all other applications on the machine. So, leave MacinTalk as it is and use the Speech Manager and Speech Pack.
If you have suggestions or comments please contact me at the address listed in the ”Legal Stuff & Registration“ chapter. Contact me also when you want to become a beta-tester for future versions.
