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From: rmh@apple.com (Rick Holzgrafe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Macintalk
Message-ID: <13663@goofy.Apple.COM>
Date: 24 May 91 23:11:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: goofy.13663
References: <1991May24.071611.4646@hawk.cs.ukans.edu>
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 31

In article <1991May24.071611.4646@hawk.cs.ukans.edu> 
chai@hawk.cs.ukans.edu (Ian Chai) writes:
> Donald Peterson's search for a Mac program that reads text out loud
> reminded me that this facility came out with the mac way back in '84 
> or so, in the form of Macintalk, but that in recent years, Macintalk
> seems to have been abandoned by Apple.
> 
> In fact, most of the Macintalk-using programs I had died with 6.0.5
> and I think the rest of them went with sys7...
> 
> Why??????? Apple coulda boasted that Mac was the only computer that
> *came* with built-in speech synthesis... but no, they let it fall by
> the wayside.

MacinTalk was done by an outside firm, and Apple purchased the program so 
the Mac could have an extra splashy intro in 1984: it could introduce 
itself. We never purchased the source code. That's why we can't upgrade it 
to work with new System software: we're as helpless as you are. (It was 
patched the hard way once, to get rid of some self-modifying code that 
failed on 68020's and 030's, but its current problems are much more 
fundamental.)

I can't comment on possible replacements since I don't know of any. (Not 
my line of work - though it sounds like fun! :-)

==========================================================================
Rick Holzgrafe              |    {sun,voder,nsc,mtxinu,dual}!apple!rmh
Software Engineer           | AppleLink HOLZGRAFE1          rmh@apple.com
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