Fix a minor bug in some languages' Speakable Items

Jul 25, '05 07:55:00AM

Contributed by: ryancu

If you use Australian or Irish (and perhaps others, but not U.S.) set as your region (using the International prefs panel), and you use Speakable Items, here's a workaround for a subtle bug. When using Speakable Items to hear the current day by speaking "What day is it?," the answer is missing a space. This means you hear something like "It apostrophe s Tuesday 12th July." Although not present in Mac OS 9, I think this bug is in every version of Mac OS X...

Here's how to fix it:

  1. Turn Speakable Items off if it is running

  2. In terminal type the following:
    sudo vim /System/Library/Speech/Recognizers/AppleSpeakableItems.\
    SpeechRecognizer/Contents/Resources/SpeakableItems.app/Contents/\
    Resources/WhatDayIsItSIAction.plist
  3. Go down five lines and across so the cursor block covers the open angle bracket in the line <string>It's</string>, after the word It's

  4. Push 'i' to enter insert mode, and type a space, such that the line now reads:
    <string>It's </string>
  5. Push escape to exit insert mode. Type ":wq" to write/save and quit
All done! Now just re-enable Speakable Items and test the new correctly-pronounced current day...

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