Looking for software to read PDFs/web pages aloud on OS X
- by Clinton Blackmore
I am looking for software that will read PDFs and web pages aloud for me under OS X 10.5, preferably something that is free.
I am aware that you can make your Mac read to you by pressing a key combination. It is pretty slick, but I really want something that:
will allow me to say, "Read this document" and let me skip paragraphs and pause (instead of simply stopping and then restarting from the beginning)
will allow me to skip things that aren't relevant, like page headers, footers, and side bars.
will allow me to rewind and listen to something again (either to think on it more deeply, or to understand what the text-to-speech engine was trying to say)
for a pdf with text in two columns, will let me read just one column at a time. (Right now if I make a selection, it gets both columns and reads from one and then from another. If I could just select one column and read it, I'd be happier. [IIRC, Apple improved things in Snow Leopard so you can select one column in a pdf.])
I don't really expect one program to do both pdfs and web pages, but it would be nice.
