Document Reader

[NickFitz]

Send all the documents to India, and have someone read them into a microphone and email the resulting mp3's back.

Sorteeeed.

But maybe he/she wants to be able to understand them?

[King Cnvt]

Any suggestions for a software which reads aloud a doc such as word,pdf etc and probably convert them into mp3 files..Did try google,but too many options and too many limitations in terms of not supporting pdf,no generation of mp3,etc....

Send all the documents to India, and have someone read them into a microphone and email the resulting mp3's back.

Sorteeeed.

[bored]

If you only need to read the text aloud, then MS Word is enough.

The default Windows TTS engine is lousy so if you are going to use TTS a lot, it might make sense to buy a better engine - I used AT&T Natural Voices which was excellent.

[NickFitz]

For the reading bit you could use a trial version of Jaws:
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jaws.asp

It's Windows screen reader software for people with visual impairments and handles most Windows apps; the demo version will run for forty minutes after which you have to reboot your machine, so run it in a virtual machine (something like VMWare or Parallels) - it will also read out your Start menu and dialog boxes, which will slowly drive you mad if you put it on your primary machine.

Then use some bit of software that allows you to intercept audio output and record it, and you're done. I actually use a Mac, running Windows in a Parallels VM, then use AudioHijack Pro to grab the audio, but if you're stuck with Windows only, there's bound to be something which does the same job. Here's an example of it with default settings reading out a form on a web page - not the best example for your purposes, but it's all I've got up on the web:
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/tests/acce...tualCursor.mp3

You can control the accent, speed, intonation and so forth, so with a bit of a play you may find it suits your purposes.

[realityhack]

Tech forum pls.

Dunno - any speech-text application plus a recording app? Probably be the cheapest option.

Any suggestions for a software which reads aloud a doc such as word,pdf etc and probably convert them into mp3 files..Did try google,but too many options and too many limitations in terms of not supporting pdf,no generation of mp3,etc....