[texhax] beamer and "Read out loud"

[James Quirk]

Victor,

On Sun, 18 Apr 2010, Victor Ivrii wrote:

> James, thanks
> 
> Remote control was a serious question and after you pointed me out to
> "Collaborate" I investigated it and found that Acrobat Collaborate
> really gives such an option. I tested it (albeit without Skype as a
> voice carrier as Skype was not installed on the resident PC in our
> seminar room)
> 
> http://wiki.math.toronto.edu/TorontoMathWiki/index.php/Video_Seminar
> 
> which gives a real opportunity to give a talk from another location
> (normal video stream does not have high enough resolution to see
> beamer presentation or blackboard writing without efforts).
> 
> What I am interested now is different: once a year my wife runs award
> ceremony for school kids in some math competition in the room filled
> with 250 of them and when she calls someone simultaneously we display
> the name highlighted. She wants to push reading names to computer (so
> if name is not called properly she could blame "the stupid computer"
> :-)
I understand your application here is different. But the solution path of 
an "active document" is identical in spirit to the home-brew solution I 
would have constructed for your first application. Anyhow, my ulterior 
motive in replying to your message was to point out the reintroduction of 
the FRPAA, which has far reaching consequences for the communication of 
science and mathematics. Hence its relevance to many, but certainly not 
all, TeX aficionados. Ot to put it another way. If the FRPAA were 
embraced, how will TeX remain relevant in the medium to far term.

James

> 
> Victor
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 9:17 AM, James Quirk <jjq at galcit.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > our query follows on from the one you asked me offline: can a PDF be
> > controlled remotely? Yes it is possible to use pdflatex to construct
> > a document where text is read out and lines are highlighted in sync,
> > and it can be automated after a fashion. The approach relies on
> > using JavaScript and its tts methods, rather than the more common
> > tagged screen reading. One weakness of the approach
> > is tha there is no tts method for waiting on the speech buffer to
> > drain. Another, which is probably a show stopper in your case, is that
> > the software approach is not beamer friendly. For it works best
> > when the main presentation is /Widget based rather than page-stream based.
> 
> 
> 
>