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future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 11:33 am
by rjbrouk
Hello Steve,

I am not sure if this is possible or if it would be popular. I have a problem with my sight. I know that Weather Display has that you can use the microsoft voice to announce certain readings like the barometric pressure, temp and others. I know that Weather Display will do this every hour which can be annoying would be good enough if every other hour it would announce for example current forecast, barometric pressure rising or falling, wind speed, outside temp and humidity. Can or does Cumulus/Cumulus 2 support this function in the future? Would be a very nice option for people that have problem seeing the small numbers.



Thanks,
Bob

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 12:12 pm
by Gina
I can't answer for Cumulus but I have a suggestion. I don't know about Internet Explorer because I don't use it, but Firefox has the ability to zoom in on the web page. This makes the frequently tiny font readable. I use it a lot.

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 1:08 pm
by steve
I did think some time ago that a voice facility would be useful. But now you've told me that WD does it, I can't do it, because I will again be accused of stealing the idea ;)

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 2:02 pm
by rjbrouk
steve wrote:I did think some time ago that a voice facility would be useful. But now you've told me that WD does it, I can't do it, because I will again be accused of stealing the idea ;)

I can understand you concern there. But, Microsoft Anna belongs to Microsoft not WD. It's up to the Dev on how they use it. LOL if WD would say anything maybe Microsoft should take a look at WD for stealing there tech LOL besides there is another weather software believe goes through wunderground some weather store that offers voice as well but very pricey option to an already pricey weather monitoring software, I can't afford over 100 bucks just for speech :D . Thanks for you replay and take care.

Bob

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 2:19 pm
by steve
I'll look into it, Bob - thanks for the suggestion. As a great man once said: We don't need permission for anything!

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 2:31 pm
by rjbrouk
steve wrote:I'll look into it, Bob - thanks for the suggestion. As a great man once said: We don't need permission for anything!
Got aggravated because I could not remember the name of the company but found it. Ambientweather.com they do the speech to but its a module you have to buy separate. I did there demo long time ago it's not bad, Cumulus is a lot better in my opinion. When the 30 days was over and seen if you wanted all they offered would run you close to 100 bucks and that is without the voice module.

Anyway thanks for the response and Thanks for such a wonderful program. Want to make a donation so bad but employment is hard to come by where I live. Hopefully in a month I can do something.

Bob

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 4:44 pm
by mcrossley
steve wrote:I'll look into it, Bob - thanks for the suggestion. As a great man once said: We don't need permission for anything!
Steve, iirc you use Delphi but I have some c# code for using the voice announcer that I could ping over, it is used to read out info in an astro application. Its pretty staright forward stuff.

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 5:05 pm
by steve
Cumulus 2 is written in C#, so it may be useful for that, if not for C1, thanks.

Re: future enhancement request for either one

Posted: Mon 17 May 2010 9:25 pm
by gemini06720
Bob...
rjbrouk wrote:But, Microsoft Anna belongs to Microsoft not WD. It's up to the Dev on how they use it. LOL if WD would say anything maybe Microsoft should take a look at WD for stealing there tech...
The technology for the voices used by Microsoft was purchased by Microsoft from a small and promising company (read, hostile takeover, the company and its technology was purchased by Microsoft but the employees were let go). Weather Display does not use the Microsoft technology to produce it audible weather information - Weather Display uses a utility (or code) that establish a conversion link between text and voice - there are quite a few other software that use a similar technology - Microsoft has also provided for years the necessary 'hooks' to make the voices accessible by other software...