I have found listening to my text, via text-to-speech, useful during editing. On Windows, I use the NaturalReader app alongside Scrivener, as it lends itself to a couple of rapid select/listen or copy/paste/listen approaches and can be easily interrupted and controlled during speech.
I’m curious as to what text-to-speech strategies folks have settled on for use with iOS Scrivener.
I’ve tried a few approaches (and may have overlooked something obvious or be mis-remembering some details)…
- Select/speak feature offered within Scrivener. Works, but can’t apparently interrupt speech until it has finished the selected material.
- iOS’s VoiceOver assistive technology. Works, and can be set up such that one can toggle on and off as desired, but as I recall doesn’t discriminate between regions of the screen or allow the user fine control.
- Copy/paste between Scrivener and text-to-speech apps. Tedious, if need to do frequently, at least on older/lower end iOS devices that don’t support side-by-side display of apps.
I haven’t found any of the above to be particularly attractive. That’s not a criticism of iOS Scrivener or iOS, just my personal experience and/or ignorance and inexperience. I suspect that some of it is due to touch based text selection being clumsier and slower than mouse based selection, at least for me. I’m curious as to whether stylus based selection, particularly via the fast precise Apple Pencil (requires iPad Pro I think), may improve on this.
What are other folks experiences and strategies with regard to text-to-speech and iOS Scrivener?
Thanks.