Re: OT: saytime program

[Doug Smith <bdsmith@oralux.org>]

What about this?  Why don't you make your own files.  You can make
them yourself, or have someone who has a voice you really like, make
them for you.  

All you need to do to make the files is use either the sox rec command
or arocord, whichever gives you the best results.  When the files are
made, you can simply do this, and I will be glad to help you find the
logic to parse the results.  

Write a program or some kind of script that can do all of these: 

First of all, call the date command.  This can be done in a shell
command with the exec "date" command or whatever it is, I would have
to play around for acouple of minutes to find out the exact command
structure.  This would have to go into a variable which would be
parsed.  

The parsing logic is relatively simple, We can easily see, when we
use the date command, how many characters are used for each part of
the results.  So the program would then have to: 

look through the string for the first, second, third, etc parts of the
results of the date command.  Then all we would have to do is this: 

decide which files to play.  We can do this by reading what the
results of our new parsed data variables tell us.  You can have the
program do all of this, if you want.  

If you don't like the standard military time read-outs of date, the
program can simply subtract 12 from each hour starting at 1300 hours
or 1:00 PM, and the files could say the time in 12-hour format.  

That's all a talking clock, talking digital watch, or any other
talking time-telling device does.  With all this, use the sox play
command or the aplay command, each of which will handle mp3 files, and
you are good to go.  You have your own saytime program.  



Hope this helps. 




-- 
Doug Smith: C.S.F.C.
Computer Scientist For CHRIST