nosrac/dictater

Replacement for built-in Speech services. Supports playing, skipping, progress, and more

dictater's Issues

Suggestion: Support OS zoom keyboard following for Accessibility

There's an Accessibility that allows the zoom Accessibility feature (not to be confused with pinch zooming) to follow the keyboard. It'd be nice (though certainly not necessary if other suggestions are chosen) if the tele feature supported this by having zoom follow along/shift the framing.

No way to quit Dictater & other UI issues

It doesn't seem possible to quit Dictate. I right-click to select quit, but it's greyed out:

Also, the options menu is wonky in dark mode, but it's not really a big deal:

Finally, I really miss the gear icon that called up the options (The gear-icon in the floating menu that has the controls), but I guess right-clicking is okay. :)

[bug] hangs forever when "read along" is selected for a long text.

When I send a very long text to Dictator (it estimates 170m), and then choose "read along", Dictator draws the text window once, then hangs forever. Neither the text window, nor the main Dictator popup, ever respond again.

Request: I would like to be able to edit text in the telepromter.

Plain and simple request. I would like to be able to edit the text that appears in the teleprompter and is eventually read. I use this app to read the news and I have to settle for adding the inline ads or listen to the story in parts, which defeats the purpose. I'm sure it is going to take some work, but it should be doable. (I don't know swift and macOS internals but I would image it is possible).

Anyway, thanks for making this little app it sure comes in handy. Looking forward to the new feature.
Thanks

Feature: Hide Shortcut

When I right click and dictate something, I don't always want to see the popup. It would be nice to either be able to disable this auto popup completely, or a quick shortcut to click the "done" button

Is there any way to use Dictator in Preview?

Great App, thanks for making this.
I know Dictator does not support PDF, but is there any way, i.e., through settings of either GUI or command or script, that makes it work in Preview? I know some basic terminal skills. The Apps I use most on Mac are Safari and Preview, I find Dictator really great for reading stuff in Safari, better than the built-in Text-to-Speech function, so I have the question. If the answer is no, it's OK, I'll just close the issue. Thanks for reading.

The much needed, "Start Speaking", or rather "Dictate... from here" still missing.

My longest–lived and most irksome problem with the absence of a feature in Apple's speech implementation - is the missing/seemingly obvious "Start Speaking.. form here" command. In essence..

START speaking WITH the selected text... DON'T JUST read the selected text!

I was hoping Dictater would would make this simple dream possible, but no. Either it is not as obvious to everyone else, or it is impossible to implement, or something? I'm hoping the creators of this software have similar sentiments, and will cnsider such an enhancement.

Minimum height of "read along" window is too tall.

In previous versions of Dicater you could shrink the "read along" window, so it only took up a few lines of space. This had the following advantages:

• It was ideal for proofreading, as you could increase the font size so you only saw one line at a time.

• Having a small "read along" window also allowed you to keep the main application open in full screen and so edit text in place while viewing the dictation in the "read along" window.

In the the new Dicater the "read along" window has a minimum height which is far taller than before.

As a result, it takes up more space and so loses the advantages listed above.

Please could you adjust the minimum height, so it can be shrunk down as was possible in previous versions.

Dictater settings preempted by Siri in Sierra

I upgraded to Mac Sierra from El Capitan recently and today I used Dictater for the first time since the upgrade. When I clicked on Speech Settings, hoping to adjust the dictation speed, the settings for Siri appeared instead. Should I re-install? Will that screw up Siri? Thanks. [email protected]

Doesn't work on macOS Monterey / Apple M1

After downloading the archive and running the app, I get:

The application “Dictater” can’t be opened.
-47

Harware: MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020)

Is there a brew cask formula?

Suggestion: Provide support for native Application Zooming

It'd be nice if we could zoom in/out the text as is supported by a lot of applications. I believe there is are two types that are managed by the OS (but don't take my word for it).

Application zooming, which seems to support zooming text or specified panels, and OS zooming, which seems to control overall sizing of all elements.

This is a quick, intuitive way to adjust text size quickly. Usage? When I'm sitting back and want to have larger text temporarily. When using my laptop to read out recipe instructions while keeping the laptop out of the way and out of harm's way.

Dictate teleprompter gets hidden by screen saver

When using teleprompter mode, the user is unlikely to press anything and so the screensaver is triggered, hiding the teleprompter mode.

It would be good if the screensaver is disabled when teleprompter is running (just like when playing video in iTunes or VLC).

Speech rate option

I'd like to use it for speed-reading. For example, when I just need to go through some boring text, but don't have the time to read it thoroughly.

With "say" utility on the terminal I can set the speech rate to 300 with option "-r". But that utility doesn't have the pause button when I want to read through some part myself.

So I wish, Dictater had the reading speed option as well.

Unable to increase font size.

Summary

Unable to increase font size using any font (including demo font, Avenir Next). See screenshot for all-in-one report (specs, OS version, GUI state). It doesn't matter what state I have the app in.

Steps

1. Select text in application (Tested in a 32-bit MUSH client called Atlantis and latest Chrome)
2. Right-click to bring up the context menu and select Dictate
3. Click the eye icon
4. Click gear icon
5. Click + button (either)
6. Observe lack of change

Scaling isn't something everyone can have on all the time given compatibility issues with (off the top of my head) 20-30% of apps I run across.

Notes

• scaling is not turned on
• retina display
• halo testing performed
  • fresh machine restart
  • brute force testing against various options in Dictater app
  • testing against various states (aka paused in middle of dictating, finished dictating selected text)
• Compatability - Cannot test on Catalina => I cannot upgrade to Catalina yet because a tooon of applications and games (video games professional, for work purposes) still are only 32-bit.

Screenshot/Specs

Dictater Pause not working after MacOs upgrade to 10.15.1 Catalina

After upgrading MacOs I found Dictator will pause for 5-10 seconds, then reset to beginning.
The ability to pause is the main feature I like in this product. Hoping your kind attention is turned to fixing this -- you don't realize how much you need something until it's not there.

John

Play/Pause Shortcut

First off, I want to say I'm loving this app. Thank you for the work!

My issue is I would like to assign hot keys to some of the functions in the app (I looked through the issues, open and closed, and didn't see this listed, but I apologize if it has been stated somewhere). Basically, if I'm working on revisions in a word processor (or even while in Read Along mode, which I notice has a CMD 1 shortcut), I'd like to be able to hit a shortcut on my keyboard to pause the dictation, make a correction, then unpause the dictation. It would be nice to set hot keys for the Skip and Skip Backward features, too, but being able to pause it instantly instead of using the mouse cursor would save time and frustration.

I look forward to a response. Thanks again!

Request: Dock Teleprompter Mode window to main window

Whenever I click on the eyeball, the Teleprompter Mode window pops up behind the main Dictator interface, so I have to move it out of the way.

It would be nice if the Teleprompter Mode window docked to the main main Dictator interface.

Suggestion: Allow GUI interface to appear on all desktops

Presumably, this could be enabled by the user if we had the option to show Dictator in the dock via right click > options.

Personally, if I were to get the best of both worlds, I'd also have the option to retain the desktops settings, then hide the Dictater app from the dock (so it's not taking up space, like how it works now).

high CPU and choppy speech until getSpeechDuration returns

On my machine at least, which has a 3Ghz core 2 duo and an SSD, the speech is choppy and the CPU spikes while the total duration is calculated. Once this function returns, the speech and CPU return to normal. I rebuilt with the call to getSpeechDuration commented out and everything behaves nicely again.

I'm wondering if instead synthesizing all a second time in the background to get total duration, maybe going by some kind of word count/speech rate heuristic might be less taxing on older systems, especially since we're only looking for a low precision duration, anyway.

Feature Request: Media Keys Support?

I know the app supports arrow keys for fwd/rwd and space bar to toggle pause/play. Would it be possible to also support media keys with something like SPMediaKeyTap?

Edit: Actually, rather than SPMediaKeyTap which is pre-arc ObjC, MediaKeyTap is a nice little Swift rewrite/wrapper. Getting this working was pretty easy, only really required lightly modifying AppDeligate.swift. There's also a Cocoapod for it. If you're interested, I can make a pull request, although it's really only a few minutes effort.

https://github.com/nhurden/MediaKeyTap

I'm quite happy now. I can listen to text with my bluetooth headphones, and pause and rewind as needed while away from my desk. (I use BTHSControl to allow BT to send media keys, and got a cheap long USB range bluetooth adapter that lets me roam quite far.)

Update Mar 2017: BTHSControl isn't supported under Sierra, but mac-bt-headset-fix does support Sierra -- it allows BT headsets to send media keys for play/pause, fast forward and rewind. The above mentioned modification to Dictater continues to work.

new feature request

I suppose it´s not possible but, would it be possible to put a some sort of refresh text option that'll enable Dictater to read recently modified text?

Can not find Dictate under Prefrences>Keyboard>Shortcuts>Text

I'm using 10.11 El capitan and installed dictater using brew cask

I can't find the Dictater under keyboard services.

I just download the Dictater and want to enable it. But when I followed the guide I could't find the Dictater under keyboard services. My OS is 10.11.

Request: Speed reading option for teleprompter

It would be neat if teleprompter would only show one word on screen at a time adjusting the size of the word to fit the teleprompter window.

This would be useful for:
-Teleprompter reading: As you only see the word you have to speak.
-Proofing documents: I use dictate for proofreading, as it is good way to spot misspelt words (thanks to the audio) and missing punctuation (as the teleprompter highlights word). Having one word on screen at a time would make proofreading even easier (especially for spotting mixed up words).

FontAwesome Glyphs Show Up As "Question Mark box".

I built from source.

1,000 words...

Highlight Color

I use f.lux to turn my screen orange at night in order to avoid blue light. I struggle using Dicator at night when reading with the "Read Along" screen and the yellow highlight blends into the orange tint..

A great feature would be to enable changing the highlight colors. A bonus would be to choose highlight, underline, or change text color.

Dictate Service not working form Preview App

Using the "Dictate" Service (either via shortcut or via right click→Services→Dictate) within the Preview App viewing a PDF file in Catalina 10.15.3 seems not to work anymore with Dictater 1.2.1. While previewing the same PDF in Chrome, however, "Dictate" is working.

This is kind of a pity, since dictating and highlighting text in (scientific) PDFs is my go-to use case for Dictater.

Still, thank you so much for your work!

Hangs using OS 10.13.2

Speech begins and quickly hangs.

"Check for updates..." doesn't seem to work. It's diabled.

Am I missing something?

Upgrade to latest Swift Version

@Nosrac, I use this app on a frequent basis and would like some minor enhancements. It appears this is on an old version of swift. If you could upgrade to the latest Swift version, I could try to pitch in and work on some of the bug fixes and/or enhancements.