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A fun easter egg in the "say" command is that "OS X" is said as "Oh Ess Ten". You can also change voices with -v. My favorite is "cellos" since it sings to you

A fun easter egg in the "say" command is that "OS X" is said as "Oh Ess Ten". You can also change voices with -v. My favorite is "cellos" since it sings to you.

robertoandred 2y ago
Not sure that's an easter egg? That's been the pronunciation for 25 years.
- mholm 2y ago
  It's at least manually programmed in. Otherwise it would have said 'Ecks'
staplung 2y ago
It actually understands roman numerals, to a certain extent. E.g. `say LVIII` will say "58". However, `say MCMLXXIX` speaks some gibberish that ends in the word "six", for some reason. It also knows how to say numbers up into the trillions but not more than that (although I feel like it used to).
ramses0 2y ago
Other cute `say` tricks: muck around with OSX Default Speech Voice (to a siri-ish voice) and you can invoke that from the CLI. I hacked together a little script for demo recording like: START_FROM="$1" STARTED=0 function transcript() { ID="$1" TO_SAY="$2" if [[ ...STARTED || START_FROM && ID... ]]; then STARTED=1 say "$TO_SAY" fi } transcript "STEP001" "This is a test" transcript "STEP001b" "of the emergency broadcast system" transcript "STEP002" "This is only a test, if this was ..." transcript "STEP003" "...etc..." ...and then I have a hardcoded `--output` which will then change the invocation to `say -o "$ID.wav" "$TO_SAY"` and output audio files. That way I can iterate on voiceover scripts, eg: `./demo-script "STEP002"` => `./demo-script --output` It's really helpful for iterating on pronunciations, eg: `transcript "STEP005" "In case of Four Hundred and Four errors..."`, I can just "skip to" and iterate against that line (and subsequent ones), or "skip back" and hear it in more of a flowing context. ...even if I don't end up using the `say`-generated audio, having a transcript (and even pacing) that I can just read through with my own voice is super helpful.

A fun easter egg in the "say" command is that "OS X" is said as "Oh Ess Ten". You can also change voices with -v. My favorite is "cellos" since it sings to you.

robertoandred 2y ago

Not sure that's an easter egg? That's been the pronunciation for 25 years.

mholm 2y ago
It's at least manually programmed in. Otherwise it would have said 'Ecks'

staplung 2y ago

It actually understands roman numerals, to a certain extent. E.g. `say LVIII` will say "58". However, `say MCMLXXIX` speaks some gibberish that ends in the word "six", for some reason. It also knows how to say numbers up into the trillions but not more than that (although I feel like it used to).

ramses0 2y ago

Other cute `say` tricks: muck around with OSX Default Speech Voice (to a siri-ish voice) and you can invoke that from the CLI. I hacked together a little script for demo recording like: START_FROM="$1" STARTED=0 function transcript() { ID="$1" TO_SAY="$2" if [[ ...STARTED || START_FROM && ID... ]]; then STARTED=1 say "$TO_SAY" fi } transcript "STEP001" "This is a test" transcript "STEP001b" "of the emergency broadcast system" transcript "STEP002" "This is only a test, if this was ..." transcript "STEP003" "...etc..." ...and then I have a hardcoded `--output` which will then change the invocation to `say -o "$ID.wav" "$TO_SAY"` and output audio files. That way I can iterate on voiceover scripts, eg: `./demo-script "STEP002"` => `./demo-script --output` It's really helpful for iterating on pronunciations, eg: `transcript "STEP005" "In case of Four Hundred and Four errors..."`, I can just "skip to" and iterate against that line (and subsequent ones), or "skip back" and hear it in more of a flowing context. ...even if I don't end up using the `say`-generated audio, having a transcript (and even pacing) that I can just read through with my own voice is super helpful.