15.5. The Mac Reads to You
So far in this chapter, you've read about the Mac's listening ability. But the conversation
doesn't have to be one-way; it's even easier to make the Mac talk.
Some Mac OS X programs come with their own built-in speaking features.For example,
Mail can read your messages a loud; just Control-click (or right-click) inside a message
window and, from the pop-up menu, choose Speech Start Speaking. Most Cocoa
programs can speak when you use the Start Speaking Text command in the Services
menu. You can add a Speak command in FileMaker Pro scripts. Mac OS X's Chess and
Calculator programs can talk back, too.
But that's kid stuff. Truth is, the Mac can read almost anything you like: text that you
pass your cursor over, alert messages, menus, and any text document in any program. It
can speak in your choice of 24 synthesizer voices, ages 8 to 50. The Mac's voice comes
out of its speakers. Most read with a twangy, charmingly Norwegian accent— all but
Alex, who makes his debut in Leopard and sounds scarily like a professional human
voice-over artist.

Note: This reading-text business is not the same thing as the Mac's VoiceOver feature.
VoiceOver is designed to read everything on the screen, including pop-up menus,
buttons, and other controls, to visually impaired Mac fans (and to permit complete
control, mouse-free, of everything). Details begin on Section 15.5.1.3
.

15.5.1. Setting Up the Mac's Voice
To configure the way the Mac talks, revisit the Speech pane of System Preferences. Click
the Text to Speech tab at the top of the window. As you can see in Figure 15-14
, you can
control which of the Mac's voices you want your computer to use, as well as how fast it
should speak.

Tip: Five of the voices sing rather than speak. Good News sings to the tune of "Pomp and
Circumstance," otherwise known as the Graduation March. Bad News sings to the tune of

with people in neighboring cubicles.)
•
Delay. The ostensible purpose of the Talking Alerts feature is to get your attention
if you've wandered away from your Mac—mentally or physically. The chances are
slim, but an urgent problem might occur that, if left undetected, could land you in
trouble. (A 500-page printout brought to its knees by a paper jam comes to mind.)
In other words, if you're still sitting in front of your Mac, you may not need the
Mac to speak to get your attention; you could simply read the onscreen message.
That's why you can set this slider to make the Mac wait, after the error message
appears, for up to a minute before trying to flag you with its voice. That way it
won't harangue you unnecessarily. (Click Play for a sense of how long the Mac
will delay before speaking.)
GEM IN THE ROUGH
Talking to Chess
If your friends and co-workers are, for some reason, still unimpressed by Mac
OS X and your mastery of it, invite them over to watch you play a game of
chess with your Mac—by talking to it.
(Actually, this feature isn't purely for entertainment: Some chess players prefer
to move without looking at the board. By speaking their moves to the
computer—and having the computer respond by speaking its own moves—these
people can play "blindfolded.")
Open the Chess program. Unless you've turned it off (in Chess Preferences),
the game's speech-recognition feature is already turned on. When it's on, the
round Feedback window should be visible onscreen.
To learn how to speak commands in a way that Chess understands, click the
small gray triangle at the bottom of the Speech Feedback window to open the
Speech Commands window. As usual, it lists all the commands that Chess can
comprehend.
You specify the location of pieces using the grid of numbers and letters that
appears along the edges of the chessboard. The white king, for example, starts

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