FAQs

If you want to build a large pronunciation dictionary, you might want to create or edit the rules on your Mac or PC. Fortunately, you can create or edit the rules using a plain text editor and paste it into Voice Dream Reader.
The syntax rules are very simple:

• One line per rule.
• For each rule, there’re 5 fields separate by commas. The field are:
  1. Search text. In double quotes. This is the string that you want to search for.
  2. Match mode. 0=Word, 1=Anywhere, 2=Regular Expression. For word search, it is considered a match only if the search text is a single word, and it appears in the text as a single word and not a part of another word. “Any Text” search results in a match no matter where the search text appears even if it’s a full sentence, or a string that appears as a part of a word.
  3. Ignore case. Y=Yes, N=No.
  4. Pronunciation text. In double quotes. This is how you want the search text pronounced.
  5. Pronunciation rule type: 0=Pronounce As, 1=Skip. If the value is 1 (Skip), then the pronunciation text is ignored.

For example, to skip the words “Moby Dick” since it is the book’s title which appears on every page of a PDF file, the rule is:
“Moby Dick”,1,N,””,1
You want to match “Anywhere” because the search text is not a word. And you don’t want to ignore case, because you don’t want to skip the words “moby dick” in the main text.
To pronounce “lol” as “laughing out loud”, the rules is:
“lol”,0,Y,”laughing out loud”,0
Here, you want to match by word, so that “lollipop” would not be affected. And you want to ignore case because you want to replace all caps “LOL” also.

When you backup or restore using iCloud or iTunes, your Voice Dream Library is backed up and restored. However, if you ever need to backup and restore yourself (say you want a click iOS install without iCloud or iTunes restore), use the following procedure:

To backup:

1. VERY IMPORTANT: On your device, terminate Voice Dream Reader using the task tray.
2. Open iTunes on your Mac or PC.
3. Connect your device to your Mac or PC and select it on the left.
4. On the right, click on the “Apps” tab.
5. Scroll down to “File Sharing”, and under apps, select “Voice Dream Reader.”
6. On the right, select “Voice Dream Library” folder.
7. Click on the “Save to…” button.

To restore:

1. VERY IMPORTANT: On your device, terminate Voice Dream Reader using the task tray.
2. Open iTunes on your Mac or PC.
3. Connect your device to your Mac or PC and select it on the left.
4. On the right, click on the “Apps” tab.
5. Scroll down to “File Sharing”, and under apps, select “Voice Dream Reader.”
6. On the right, select “Voice Dream Library” folder. Press the “Delete” button on your keyboard.
7. Click on “Add…”.
8. Find the backed up “Voice Dream Library” folder. Click the “Add” button.

Using this method, you can move then content from the Lite version to the paid version, or when you need to reinstall Voice Dream Reader and don’t want to lose your content.

With the Pronunciation Dictionary, you can tell Voice Dream Reader to skip text without reading it outloud. For example, if you want to skip the title of a book:

1. With the text open in the Reader, go to Voice Settings-Pronunciation Dictionary.
2. Tap on “+” to create a new entry.
3. For the entry name, type in the text you want skip, like “War and Peace”.
4. Set the match type to Any Text.
5. Set Ignore Case to On.
6. Set it to “Skip”.

You can also select the text on the screen and then tap on “Pronounce” in the pop-up menu.

If you’re adventurous, you can try using Regular Expression, or RegEx. RegEx is a way to express any pattern in text. For example:

• Chapter and Verse in the Bible is “[0-9]+:[0-9]+”
• Any text inside parenthesis is “([^)]*)”

To skip text using RegEx, just enter the pattern without the quotes, and set it to match with RegEx as match type.

1. Open iTunes on your PC or Mac, and go to Preferences.
2. On the “Advanced” tab, near the top, you’ll see iTunes Media Folder location. Make a note of it.
3. Connect your device to iTunes and select it.
4. Go to the “Apps” section of your device in iTunes, scroll down and find Voice Dream Reader under “File Sharing” and select it.
5. On the right, press the “Add…” button.
6. Navigate to the iTunes Media Folder you found earlier, then open the “Books” sub-folder.
7. Select all the books you want to bring to Voice Dream Reader.
8. Wait until iTunes completes copying the files to your device.
9. On your device, open Voice Dream Reader, select “+” and “iTunes”.
10. You should see all the books you moved. Select them all and press “Load”.
11. Enjoy!

I am using a BrailleNote Apex BT32 and an iPhone 4S, but I hope these basic instructions will be general enough to work with any Braille display and iOS device.

1. With a file open in Voice Dream, move to the first element on the screen by pressing Space with dots 1-2-3 on the Braille keyboard.
2. Move through the various elements using Space with dot 4 or an equivalent command that may be available if your Braille display has navigation keys, until you reach the words ‘Next item’.
3. You can now start reading the contents of the file by panning the Braille display to the right in the usual way, i.e. pressing Space with dot 5 or using an equivalent command, if available on your display. Continue to pan the display to the right until you reach the end of the block of text that is currently visible. You will know that you have reached the end when the focus lands on the ‘Bookmark’ button.
4. Now pan the Braille display once to the left, using Space with dot 2 or an equivalent navigation command. This will move the focus back into the text area and the Braille display will be blank. This step is important, otherwise the Scroll command in the next step will not work.
5. To scroll to the next page of text, press Space with dots 1-4-5-6. This is the ‘Scroll down one page’ command and it is the equivalent of a ‘Three-finger swipe up’ using VoiceOver on the touchscreen. To scroll up to the previous page, press Space with dots 3-4-5-6, which is the equivalent of a ‘three-finger swipe down’.
6. Once the Scroll command has been executed, the Braille display briefly shows the percentage of progress through the file, […]
   

Sometimes, your Internet connection may appear to be working, but it’s actually dropping packets of data occasionally. Since the voice files are very large, this can cause voice download to fail.

The first thing you want to check is whether you’re downloading any data at all. When you press “Download”, do you see any progress? Is the blue bar growing? If so, you can keep pressing on the “Download” button until it completes. The voice downloader resumes from the point where it failed.

If after you press “Download” and there is no progress — just an error message — then you should find another WiFi network and download the voice there.

Last, please make sure that you’re not running any software on your device that interferes with network traffic. VPN, and other network monitoring and security software may cause issues.

Go to Settings-Manage My Voices, and swipe left on the voice you don’t want. The Delete button will appear.
Left swipe is a standard iOS gesture for deleting an row in a table.

• One-finger tap. Hide and unhide the controls.
• Two-finger tap. Scrolls to the highlighted text being read after you’ve manually scrolled away from it.
• Two-finger swipe left and right. Same functionality as the rewind and fast forward buttons.
• Double tap. Double tap on a word to start reading from that word.
• Double finger double tap. Same functionality as the play-or-pause button.
• Press and hold. Bring up menu for seeing the dictionary definition of a word, create a bookmark at the paragraph, or highlight the current sentence.
• Pinch and un-pinch. Or, squeeze and expand. Enter or exit Focused Reading Mode.

Many people prefer a distraction free screen without a lot of text. Voice Dream Reader is equipped with Focused Reading Mode. To activate, pinch the screen with two fingers, and the speech text area will be reduced to about a third of the screen in the middle. In addition, the text will be scrolled automatically so that the word and line being spoken is always in the middle. To bring back the full screen, un-pinch or expand the text area with two fingers. Keep in mind that you finger tips must start out from inside the reduced text area.