Settings page

Controls on the settings page:

Loop text file.

If checked the text file will keep repeating.

Hints

Switches on/off  the small hints that pop up when the mouse cursor moves over controls.

Tip of the day

Allows the startup tips to be switched on or off.

Location of sample files.

The displayed folder used for the file samples. You may have as many of these folders as you wish, each one should contain a set of audio sample .wav files. See the How to... section for more details of these audio samples.

Character selector

Selects which text character is being viewed in the character translation window.

Character selector browse

Allows you to see which audio sample file is associated with the currently displayed text character.

Record to checkbox.

Allows audio recordings of the code to be made if checked. You need to select which file will be used for the recording

The Limit Output option is particularly useful when recording in PCM uncompressed format when audio files can quickly become very large. If set then recording will automatically stop when the preset limit is reached. A plus for PCM audio is that it can be played via an ordinary CD player. A Disadvantage is the enormous size of PCM audio files.

The Compress button allows you to select an installed Windows compression codec. This will allow you to record audio files containing lots of code but of reasonable size. There is a quality versus compression tradeoff, but MPEG3 compression gives the best results by far. Unfortunately, the author found that the Windows MP3 codec as supplied with Windows 2000 would not work. However, the freely available LAME MP3 codec did work fine during tests. This is available for download on many Internet sites.