Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ogccse!blake!uw-beaver!cornell!mailrus!uflorida!haven!ames!zodiac!meridian!pkahn
From: pkahn@meridian.ads.com (Phil Kahn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Why won't/doesn't Apple support MacinTalk???
Message-ID: <6135@zodiac.UUCP>
Date: 18 Nov 88 18:29:48 GMT
Sender: news@zodiac.UUCP
Reply-To: pkahn@ads.com (Phil Kahn)
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Mt. View, CA (415) 960-7300
Lines: 23

The addition of textually generated speech can greatly enhance some
interfaces and programs.  MacinTalk (from APDA) provides such a
facility. Yet, Apple doesn't support this code, there are several
known and long existing bugs (e.g., after opening and closing the
driver, beep sounds and other sounds don't work; the sound driver
apparently being closed or something like that), interfaces are hard to
come by since it isn't supported, the clarity of speech could be
improved, and a more complete exceptions file isn't distributed.

Why doesn't/won't Apple support this useful and potentially important
tool? Make it sound better, fix known bugs, document better, and
provide interfaces to most popular languages. Apple even throws in the
disclaimer that MacinTalk may not be compatible with future releases.
Why? It could be done through standard sound drivers to maintain
future compatability, right?  So what's the problem.  We're onlyy
talking about a half a man-year of someone's time at Apple to make this a
powerful, extensible, and extremely useful tool to the developer and
user community.

All in favor, deluge this net with support mail!!  All opposed,
explain yourselves!

phil...