[sdiy] OT: Singing Software

[KA4HJH]

Once again I forgot to send the reply to the whole list...

>>Dave, what's this about Hypercard stacks?  Is this some way to program
>>custom voices for the mac?  I believe it's os 8.0 and up that have a
>>built in speech program, is this the "Mac Speech" that you are
>>referring to?
>Speech is _old_. It runs on pre system 7.5 computers.
>I think it even runs on 68040 Macs (pre PPC).

Macintalk precedes System 7. It worked on a Mac Plus. There was a fear that
Apple would drop the speech synth with System 7 as it had to be rewritten
but they came up with an improved version.


>Hypercard was/is a typical mac way of programming.
>It uses 'cards' that can be interlinked like HTML pages,
>and can run code. Lots of people wrote interesting 'stacks' for it.
>But this genius concept never really made it to the big public.
>There are hypercards stacks around on the www, that control Speech
>and make it sing.

Remember how computers used to come with a BASIC interpreter built in?
Well, HyperCard isn't anything like that--it's MUCH better. It's the most
convenient way of slapping a program that actually works together I've ever
seen. It's been described as a software Erector (Mechano) set.
Unfortunately, Apple has practically abandoned it despite every effort by
the HC fanatic community.


There is a new cross-platform (Mac, Linux, Windows) HC clone available with
a special cross-grade deal for HyperCard/SuperCard owners. There's the
usual free downloadable demo:

http://www.runrev.com
-- 

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"