Writing Programs Reviewed.

Scrivener version (3) by Literature and Latte, a fully functional license will set you back £47:00p, (ouch!), but I gotta tell you here that it’s worth every penny. I have also got it parred right down, ignoring all of the excessive bells and whistles. Footnote: the software now reads your text back to you as well, and is a major upgrade when compared to version 1.x for Windows.

Subset consideration – Word 2003 from the Internet Archive. I can heartily recommend using them, because their download files are clean and virus free. Should you in actual fact download some old stuff from them, then a donation wouldn’t be out of the question. (I have.)

TextAloud version (4) – by NextUp, is the actual software reading program, and it will cost you £26.30p for a single user license, (its an amazing piece of kit), with Hot-Keys for reading text to you from your Browser and Word, it even does it from the Cursor Start of your text, no need to copy anything to the clipboard, thusly allowing you to edit and re-edit your text on the fly. The program is well worth it for the price.

Subset consideration – You’ll also need a system voice to read back your text, the built in voices in modern PCs are quite frankly rubbish. I’m using AMY by Ivona, but they got taken over by Amazon some time back. AMY’s vocal timbre is described as (British, English), and is a SAPI 5 voice.

Here is an example of her fine dulcet tones.

NextUp does sell a package deal for (AMY costing £33.95p), plus a TextAloud bolt on for £10.55p: which is a bargain.

Amy has an alternative download link, as sold by Harposoftware for £33.42, but I have to say here – that she sounds fake, especially compared to the old version that I’ve got, and you’ve hopefully just heard.

Legal Note of Worth, all of the prices stated above; are single user licenses, .. (for personal use only.) Licenses that certainly do not cover any commercial audio productions of your work. Even placing that demo up there, could be considered as an illegal act on my part, but that said: I’ve asked Ivona before if I can demonstrate their voices on my website, they gave me the OK, as long as it was very short, (I think that that demos length covers it very nicely.)

Here’s a tip before I go, never install Word 200 along side Word 2003, they don’t get on at all, and they really do flummox up your system somewhat, .. (my bad!)

Thanks for reading, Jessica: Praise be the ORI.