Amed at David Grifiths if you are around.


Noting the constination at the present demise of the Webbie program then am I right in thinking the Speakon program could fill the gap?? Is it still working?? If so I could mention it on another list I am on/


Not quite sure of the atractions or virtues of Webbie as I do not use it, but thought it worth asking.

Ray.

Hi Ray

I couldn't get speakon to work on here, have to do a clean install of java too, it is good, but I need to find something which plays music from a huge folder, speakon will do this but can't get it working right now. I haven't used webbie for several years, I removed it from my laptop yesterday.

Regards

Adrien

I am raising funds to buy my own wheelchair, I have to do this because of changes to NHS services local to me. If you can help me by donating or spreading the word, please feel free. Many thanks.

Dear Ray/ List
Speak On is still a valuable program but I always saw it as complementary to the Webbie suite of programs rather than them having any real equivalence or similarity.
In fact I once suggested to Isaac that he form a partnership with Alastair to create a super suite of accessible apps between them.

So whilst the webbie suite had a PDF app speak On never supported PDF but was, in contrast, an excellent ePub reader. There are other examples, only in Podcasts was there a real and obvious overlap.

Webbie had, now defunct, generalised catch up capability bplus live BBC radio streamintg. Speak On in contrast mainly used the Tune In radio server, which I am glad to say still appears to work. You can unfortunately not save favourite stations in speak On anymore but this is a restriction that Tune In insists on in many of it free incarnations.
As mentioned Speak On may need a re-install to establish a working Java support framework. Once installed I think that its version of Java can be updated.

Specifically if people are looking to fill the gap left by the apparent demise of Webbie and other programs this is the current suite of free media alternative I personally use on my PC.
An app not personally recommended here by me but should nevertheless still be mentioned is Dolphin Easy Reader. Easy Reader offers some but not all of the functionality of speak on. Personally I stil prefer Speak on as giving a far better general experience but Easy Reader might be an option for some, especially those with some sight as Speak On offers, as far as I am aware, no visual interface at all. It also offers direct connection to the RNIB Daisy Book Library rather than relying on importing your downloaded Daisy Books from the RNIB Web Site into an designated Speak On Daisy Book folder.
As against that Speak On connects directly both to the RNIB Audio Magazine and eTect Newsagent service, currently Easy reader has no Audio Magazine support - only supporting the EText service.

There is also a learning curve with Speak On before it becomes an easy part of your muscle memory.

So here is my list.
Daisy Book Reading - speak On.
Audio book Reading - Speak On.
ePub book Reading - Biblos if I want to Edit the actual ePub file but speak On for Reading- (I have heard good reports of Bookworm but personally it has never worked properly for me.)
RNIB eText Newsagent Service - speak On.
RNIB Audio Magazine Service - Speak On.
tune In Radio - speak On.
general Music Media Playing. - calliope by Nathan Tech.
Internet Radio Streams playing- VLC.
BBC Catch Up - BBC Sounds Schedule Pages plus TCA Media 2.x ( Note I personally find TCA version 2 works better than version 3 with some BBC and Internet Archive Streams)
YouTube - TCA Media downloader 3.x (definitely better than version 2 for actual YouTube. I personally search and play within the app for an ad free experience.
RSS News Feed - Lunar RSS by Nathan Tech.
Podcast Player - Lunar RSS by Nathan Tech.
Text to Mp3 TTS Audio Book creation - I now use the biblos braille Word processor for this as I find it better than the paid alternatives.

There are are other paid programs I use but these are the free options.

David Griffith.

.
The only real overlap was in the Podcast capability. .

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