notebook interfaces and speech



Nicolas Pettiaux wrote:

> ......
>
>
>could they have a look at the same functionnalities for
>OpenOffice2.org ... as this program is free software like maxima and
>offers a very similar interfaces for the users (who in many
>circumstancies do not realize they are working with Word or
>OpenOffice2.org writer)
>
Whatever we get working will be done in open source. If someone wants to 
look at
OpenOffice, that's fine with me.

>
>  
>
>>So you could use, as your notebook, some familiar
>>program, with display /compute sections.
>>    
>>
>
>There are some working program to speak out text that I have tried on
>my GNU/linux platform.
>  
>
Speaking text out loud is supported pretty well by microsoft and could 
easily be incorporated
into Maxima/ Allegro Common Lisp/ Windows.
  For example,

;;;  this is Allegro CL and Windows specific. Other lisps presumably 
have similar stuff.

(eval-when (compile load eval)   (require :ole)   (require :ole-dev))
(ole:start-ole)

(defconstant clsid-SAPI.SpVoice "{96749377-3391-11D2-9EE3-00C04F797396}")

(defparameter sp (ole:ask-for-autotool  ;; text to speech automation tool
              (ole:string-guid clsid-SAPI.SpVoice)
              ole:CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER))

(defun speak(s)  ;; speak the string s
  (ole:auto-method sp :Speak s 0)
  (ole:auto-method sp :WaitUntilDone 10000) ; wait up to 10 seconds
  s)

;; THAT'S ALL THAT IS NECESSARY.

;; Examples

 (speak "a x squared plus b x plus c")
 (speak "<p> 123 <spell> 123</spell>. </p>")  ;;; etc

I have other programs that change  (+ (* a (expt x 2)) (* b x) c)     to 
text.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
I suspect that with the appropriate tags, you can just have your browser
read this kind of text into speech, on Mac or Windows or Linux.