NextUp.com

I would like to be able to stop Textaloud when it reaches the end of a chapter or a short story, but I can't seem to find a way to do this. The best workaround I have found is to comment out the rest of the text, but this means moving the "startcomment" {{// marker each time which is tedious. Am I missing something obvious? A "pause until key is struck" command as in MSDOS batch files would be even better.

Unfortunately we don't have a way to do this now, we'll look at adding support in a future version. If it helps, you should be able to select the comment start characters {{// , click and hold, and drag the selection around in the article.

If you're loading TextAloud articles from a document, another option might be to use the File Splitter Utility, under the Tools menu. You'd need some text in the document, like the word 'Chapter", to split on. If this worked, you would be able to load each chapter into a TextAloud article, and just listen to the articles individually.

Ah, right. Thank you, Jim. I'll probably go on as I am then. While it is always gratifying to be right, I am sad there is not some easy way to do this. Textaloud can do so many complex things that it seems odd it can't do something so simple. I considered splitting the file, as you suggest, but that seems no more convenient. Anyway, please put it on the list for a future upgrade.

For those wishing to try my method I have devised an improved version.
First place a Start Comment command {{// at the beginning of each chapter (except the first), using the search/replace tool and an End Comment command }} after the last word in the file. Now save the file. Start Textaloud reading from the beginning and it will be found that the cursor stops at the last word before the first Start Comment entry. To continue with the next chapter simply delete the adjacent Start Comment and click on Read from cursor. Multiple Start Comment entries do not appear a problem. Reloading the document into Textaloud from disk, (as opposed to merely reopening Textaloud) will cause the deleted commands to reappear. I hope this hint wiil be of some use to other users.