Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!m.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies
From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: MacinTalk
Keywords: MacinTalk
Message-ID: <1991May31.233024.17115@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 31 May 91 23:30:24 GMT
References: <1991May29.085135.12717@netcom.COM>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Lines: 31

jkatz@netcom.COM (Joseph Katz) writes:
>>MacinTalk was done by an outside firm, 

>  TRUE.  MacinTalk was written by myself and Mark Barton.  Apple contacted
>         us back in late 1983 to write a speech synthesizer for the yet to
>         be released Mac.

It is a pity you have not pursued macintalk as an independent product.
It seems plausible that you could update and/or improve macintalk and
market it yourselves, in many different ways.

1.  You could have it speak the data coming in through the serial port, to
make a talking terminal.

2.  You could integrate it with quickdraw to make a macintosh for the blind.

3.  You could integrate it with commercial scanners to make a book
reader for the blind. 

4.  Macintalk could be the basis for a sound language for the macintosh.
This is something that apple has been ignoring for many many years
(finally they've started to address it in system 7.0).

5.  Macintalk source code could be licensed to game manufacturers.

Why haven't you pursued these options with macintalk?

Don Gillies	     |  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
gillies@cs.uiuc.edu  |  Digital Computer Lab, 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana IL

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