Live
The first tab, the one you watch during the competition: the races FINISH is broadcasting and those this computer announces, the sentence being said right now, the ones waiting, everything that has been said, and a field to speak yourself.
| Announce | Race | Status | Voice (FINISH) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 m Women — P02 | finished | ||
| 500 m Women — P03 | started at 13:42:08 | ||
| 500 m Women — P04 | loaded |
- Races received from FINISH: what this computer announces.
- Say a message.
- In progress: the sentence being said right now.
- Queue.
- Log.
Races received from FINISH
Where: Live, on the left
One row per race FINISH is currently broadcasting (loaded, in progress or finished; a race that has been run disappears from the list):
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Announce | This computer announces this race. Uncheck it to silence it on this computer only: another VOICE computer linked to the same FINISH keeps announcing it. An unchecked race does not ring the bell here. The choice only lasts as long as the race is broadcast: a new race arrives checked. |
| Race | Its name in FINISH (“500 m Women — P03”). |
| Status | loaded, started at 13:42:08 (start time), finished. |
| Voice (FINISH) | The Speech synthesis box of the race record in FINISH, read-only. Unchecked: the race is never announced, even if Announce is checked here. |
A race is therefore announced if three conditions are met: the computer is not on Mute, FINISH marks it Speech synthesis, and it is checked in Announce.
Say a message
Where: Live, bottom left
Type a sentence, choose its language in the list on the right (the computer's default language at startup), then Enter or Say. The sentence goes ahead of the lap announcements and is spoken as soon as the current sentence ends, even in Mute mode. It is never discarded from the queue.
Messages already spoken in this language are suggested while you type: those that start with what you have typed (ignoring capitals and accents), most recent first.
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
| ↓ | Opens the list (all recent messages if the field is empty), then moves down. |
| ↑ | Moves up in the list. |
| Tab, or Enter on a suggestion | Puts the suggestion in the field, where you can edit it before saying it. |
| Enter | Says the message. |
| Esc | Closes the list. |
| Shift+Del | Forgets the chosen suggestion. |
Only messages actually spoken go into the history, 200 per language at most; a message said again moves back to the top. The history is kept on the computer
(%APPDATA%\ChronoFEED\).
In progress
Where: Live, top right
The sentence the voice is saying right now; empty during silences. The countdown and the bell can cut it off: it is then noted “muted” in the log.
Queue
Where: Live, on the right
The sentences waiting their turn, in the order they arrived (the most important ones go first when it is time to speak). The queue has rules so that it never announces an outdated time: an athlete has only one lap announcement in it (the new one replaces the old one), it keeps six lap announcements at most, a lap announcement that waits more than twelve seconds is not spoken. The final time, eliminations, annotations, the start and messages are never discarded. Details: The announcement queue; settings: Queue.
Clear discards everything that is waiting (the log notes “Queue cleared”); the sentence in progress is finished.
Handy after an incident (a race reset, a burst of laps received all at once): you start again from the next passings.
Log
Where: Live, bottom right
Everything that has happened, most recent at the top, 300 lines at most: the time, the text, then in brackets what became of it.
| In brackets | Meaning |
|---|---|
(fr), (nl)… | Said in full, in this language. |
(muted) | Cut off by the countdown or the bell. |
(discarded (replaced)) | The same athlete already had a more recent announcement. |
(discarded (queue full)) | Too many lap announcements waiting: the oldest one is dropped. |
(discarded (too old)) | It waited longer than the maximum age. |
(countdown) | A word of the end countdown (“3”, “Finish!”). |
Bell (500 m Women — P03) | The bell rang; (…: received too late (2.4 s), not rung): it arrived too late and did not ring. |
(after the bell) | The sentence said after an elimination bell. |
(no "es" voice on this computer (…)) | No voice installed for this language: noted once per language; the following announcements in this language are silent. See Choosing the voice and language. |
(synthesis failed (…)), (read error: …) | The voice or the sound card refused; VOICE carries on with the next sentence. |
It also shows the startup (“5 voices installed: fr 2, en 2, nl 1, es none, de none”), the discovery of FINISH and the bell tests. Clear empties the displayed log (nothing is written to disk).