Open Window Software News Fall 2009 A Free E-mail Newsletter from Open Window Software Featuring Tips on Using the WinFlash Suite, HandyCards and Flashcard Exchange Contents: 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Exporting Audio Files 2) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends 3) Study Tip - Don't Waste Mini-opportunities for Study 4) How To - Get Text-to-speech to Read a Foreign Language 5) Latest In-line Program Updates --------------------------------------------------- 1) WinFlash Feature Highlight - Exporting Audio Files Exporting audio versions of your study files using WinFlash Educator can help you turn commute time, waiting time and other such opportunities into productive study time. The latest version of Educator has several improvements that make audio file export more flexible - we'll discuss these in this feature highlight. To export an audio file you'll first want to set up the Text-to-Speech capabilities for your file by accessing Options|Speech while the study file is open. See the Speech topic in Help for more detail on these settings. Once you have the Text-to-Speech settings adjusted to your liking on the PC, you can output your audio file(s) by selecting Export Content... from the Educator menu. Select Sound File - Text-To-Speech as the export format in the drop-down selection box in the upper left of the Exporting from Source File dialog that appears. This will enable the Text-to-speech Settings area in the right half of the dialog where you will make the rest of your choices. Output can now be either a single audio file for all the pairs selected by the Output Filtering settings or a separate audio file for each pair. The latter choice allows you to use your audio player's shuffle feature to study the files in random order. Most people will wish to use the .mp3-format output, since even at the High Quality it produces much smaller files than the .wav output. Simple audio file outputs can be specified using the Pair Settings selections. You can include associated audio files that go with the pairs by checking the Include check boxes. If your pairs have no audio files associated with them, this setting is simply ignored. Select the pause settings you want, click OK and your audio file(s) will be exported with the name given in the final dialog box that will appear. You don't need to include the .mp3 or .wav extension - this will be added by the program. Using the Pair Settings approach, you'll always get an output of the form Question Text-to-speech, pause, Question Audio File (if present and selected in Settings), pause, Answer Text-to-speech, pause, Answer Audio File (if present and selected in Settings). If this is just what you want - excellent. If, however, you'd like the output arranged differently, you'll want to use the Pair Code approach. Checking the Use Information in Pair Code check box disables the Pair Settings section and enables the edit box in the Pair Code section. By entering easy-to-use codes in this edit box you can achieve a wide range of output arrangements. Let's say you'd like to have the Answers read first followed by the Question - emulating the 'Answer First' option used in regular PC study mode. You'd just need to enter AT 5 QT 5 to get the Answer Text-to-speech, 5-second pause, Question Text-to-speech, 5 second pause. If your deck has associated audio files with the answer that you'd like to include you could enter AT 5 AA 5 QT 5 Or a more complex arrangement, in normal order, where the question is repeated after hearing the answer QT 5 AT 5 QT 5 Here's the full listing of the codes: QT - Question text AT - Answer text QA - Question audio file AA - Answer audio file Whole Numbers - A pause of that number of seconds Note: It's a good idea to try out the above on a small file - something fewer than 10 pairs - before moving on to large files. The output of study files in the 100's to 1000's of pairs can take considerable time, so you'll want to be sure you have all the settings the way you like them before exporting larger files. --------------------------------------------------- 2) Free Upgrades for Referring Your Friends Quite a few of you have earned free upgrades to v11 by referring your friends to us! Have a friend that could use WinFlash? You can earn a free upgrade to the next release of your version of the program (v11 if you haven't upgraded yet or v12 when it's released if you're already at v11). Just have your friend mention your name in the Comments section when placing the order. A great way to help out a friend and get the next major release gratis! --------------------------------------------------- 3) Study Tip - Don't Waste Mini-opportunities for Study There are many opportunities to make a bit of progress with your studies that may seem too short to bother with. Maybe you're waiting to check out at the store - probably three or four minutes for the checker to finish the two people ahead of you. Fire up HandyCards on your PDA or switch your iPod to your Spanish Verbs playlist and use those minutes! Making a habit of claiming these otherwise-wasted minutes will add up to big gains in your studies - all from time that would otherwise have gone unused. --------------------------------------------------- 4) How To - Get Text-to-speech To Read a Foreign Language One of the biggest applications of WinFlash is foreign language study - especially vocabulary. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get text-to-speech to read your vocabulary words to you and be able to output them as audio files as discussed in the first item in this newsletter? If you're studying French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish there's an easy (and free) way to add this capability! First, you'll need to install the SAPI4 engine on your computer. This is compatible with the newer SAPI5 and both can be accessed by Educator's text-to-speech capability. You can download the installer for SAPI4 from our voices downloads page here: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/voices.htm After installing SAPI4 on your computer and checking out that it is functional by testing it in the Speech tab, you can download and install Dutch, British English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish from the link above. To complete the task, just select the proper foreign voice from Educator's Options|Speech tab to associate with the Answers (assuming your foreign words are the answers and the English words the questions). --------------------------------------------------- 5) In-line Program Updates Since the Last Newsletter The 11.00.05 update to all WinFlash versions addresses the following issues: 1. Corrected Subject Outline for locales where '-' is used as the date separator 2. Positioned cursor at last used file when opening Subject Outline 3. Fixed problem with Unicode characters in checking FIB answers 4. Corrected problem in Create Composite File when checking for duplicates 5. Added section in Help file addressing Foreign Language study 6. Made help section on exporting text to speech to .mp3 files easier to locate --------------------------------------------------- Need Help? Have A problem? Check out our online listings of the latest releases and the problems that they've solved: http://www.openwindow.com/pages/wfprobs.htm If your issue isn't covered there, please send e-mail to support@openwindow.com and we'll do our best to resolve your problem. --------------------------------------------------- SUBSCRIBE: Send e-mail to service@openwindow.com with SUBSCRIBE as the Subject. UNSUBSCRIBE: Simply send an email to service@openwindow.com with REMOVE as the Subject. This newsletter is a free service of Open Window Software and is Copyright (c) 2009 Open Window Software. All worldwide rights reserved.