All Release Notes
ClaroRead Windows Release Notes
Version 13
ClaroRead 13.0.24 released 22 January 2024.
- The UK DSA version of ClaroRead now comes with online voices, which includes many new high-quality and non-English voices - though you do have to be online! Voices include Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Ukrainian.
- If you have highlights in your Microsoft Word document then ClaroRead will leave them in place as it reads through them (unless you turn on ClaroRead’s own background highlighting.)
- When activating Speech Recognition you no longer hear the letter H announced.
- If you press Play and Stop while still in the first sentence of a Word document, then the caret is returned to the beginning of the sentence - not the second character.
- Lots of improvements to performance, especially opening the settings dialog and docking to the top of the screen.
- Pressing Shift+F8 in the Spellcheck dialog no longer causes a crash on some machines.
Version 12
Version 12.0.29 released 20 November 2023.
- Fixed spellcheck bugs for ClaroRead Dutch.
- More of our binaries are digitally signed, improving security.
Version 12.0.25 released 2 November 2023.
- Spelling suggestions in Swedish now use our advanced spelling system from our linguists, similar to ClaroRead Chrome. You’ll get more and better suggestions checking Swedish text.
- You can now find the cool ScreenMarker is in the Extras menu: use this to make a note of where you are on the screen. Great for keeping track of windows and pages and keeping you on task.
- ClaroRead now includes AudioNote and ClaroPDF so you can be sure of having these great tools no matter how you get ClaroRead.
- Analytics has changed to improve privacy and user control: you can turn off analytics in Settings, and network admins can turn it off too when they push it out to machines.
- ClaroRead no longer echoes each word as you type by default. You can turn this on in Settings > Advanced Speech.
- ClaroRead will no longer translate selected text: this was also bad for user privacy (since the text went to Microsoft), few users used the feature, and other third-party solutions do translation well. ClaroRead still has lots of different voices to let you read your translations, and still provides single-word translations as part of its dictionary features.
- Removed link to Claro Software website from Extras.
- ClaroRead no longer checks for updates for compound word checking, removing another network call and improving security - updates are infrequent and can be done in future ClaroRead versions.
- Speaking Calculator now uses a cool online version of Speaking Calculator that supports a wide range of voices and makes installing ClaroRead faster.
- You can now have a licensed version that lasts up to ten years.
Version 11
Version 11.1.3 Released 22 March 2023
- Improved performance in longer Microsoft Word documents.
- Homophone hide/show list works.
- Images are correctly shown on prediction instead of hanging around after words change.
- Spellcheck speech is correctly controlled by toggle button in spellcheck.
- Correct font colour used in prediction dialog.
- ClaroRead installs faster (and optimises later using ngen)
- Single-file MSIs so you don’t have to manage so many CAB files.
- ClaroCapture 7: new reference manager and colours
- ClaroPDF 5: more colours, speak selection, and bracket skipping.
Version 11.0.26 shipped 22 November 2022.
- You can now use Windows Speech Recognition from the ClaroRead toolbar. Click the Dictate button to have ClaroRead turn on and off speech recognition: easy and quick to dictate text into wherever you are working. Requires Windows 10 and an Internet connection.
- Click “Download more voices” in Settings to access a wider range of our available TTS voices - get the accent and language and sex of voice you want to hear.
- This replaces the “Save to Audio” button, which can be found now only on the toolbar.
- The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+F8 no longer does Save to Audio.
- Save to Video no longer shows up in ClaroRead.
- ClaroRead SE and ClaroRead both have the same new icon.
- Microsoft Word spellcheck suggestions on right-click no longer speak aloud. Use the built-in Microsoft Word functionality.
- Added support for ExamWritePad: you can select text and have it read aloud.
- Lots of improvements to performance, especially when using prediction. ClaroRead will feel more responsive and fast.
- Reduced logs written to Event Viewer and made ClaroRead installers single-file MSIs to help system administrators.
- Improvements to Dutch language and layout.
- Fixed Scan from Screen still showing after operation completed.
- Fixed speak-on-select in Adobe Reader: you can now select a chunk of text and have it read aloud.
Version 10
Version 10.1.701 released 27 July 2022.
- Fixed Extras Editor and display of Extras.
Version 10.1.605 released 9 June 2022.
- Restored ability to remove licence codes from ClaroRead (Settings, About box) so you can transfer to another machine.
- Made Dictate button better reflect Dragon state.
- Bugfixes and performance improvements.
Version 10.1.502 released 20 May 2022.
- Bugfixes and performance improvements.
Version 10.1.408 released 4 April 2022. Blog Post: ClaroRead Update
- A fresh new toolbar with improved choices of icons. We all enjoy using applications and tools that look good, and we all have different tastes: ClaroRead 10 has a friendly, colourful interface for maximum usability, another stripped-down modern one like you’ll find on your phone, and a professional-styled one like Office. Pick one that lets you concentrate on what you need to do! We’ve cleaned up the settings screens too to look more modern so you’ll recognise the icons and spend less time setting up.
New “Professional” toolbar
New “Colourful” toolbar
- We’ve written ClaroRead for English, French, Japanese, even Hebrew and Arabic – but never for Welsh! We’ve rectified that omission with a ClaroRead that works in Welsh, including spellcheck and word prediction and speech and scanning (OCR). Sadly, we can’t supply a Welsh TTS voice directly – but the commercially-available Geraint now works perfectly with ClaroRead.
ClaroRead toolbar in Welsh.
- We’ve restored the cool “homophone display” feature from ClaroRead 8 since we got a lot of feedback that people found it useful to be able to scan their text for potential errors rather than step through the contents. Thanks for the feedback!
Highlight all the homophones in your paragraph so you can check them
- You can now read in Microsoft PowerPoint just like you can read in Microsoft Word. Practise your presentations by playing them back while they are running, check what you have written in each slide, save a presentation to an audio file to listen to later.
- If you find EquatIO maths in a Word document then ClaroRead will read it back to you.
- Reduce the strain and time of listening to documents being read out by skipping references as ClaroRead reads (King, 2006). This works everywhere and means you get more speech in less time and can concentrate on understanding.
- Turn on Windows dark mode and the ClaroRead toolbar will recolour to match, reducing eye strain and distraction.
- ClaroRead now appears in the Taskbar so you can hide and show and close it easily: this is more consistent and simpler to understand.
- Selecting text to read in Adobe Reader reads out much more smoothly.
- If you select some text then click Play, ClaroRead will read out that selected text, not the clipboard function. This was already the case in Adobe Reader and Word but we’ve made it consistent across all applications now for simplicity.
- ClaroRead no longer supports Internet Explorer as a special application – you can still speak and spellcheck in Internet Explorer but for security reasons we’ve removed the highlighting features. We don’t expect this to impact any users.
- To help with understanding user needs we now use Google Analytics to anonymously analyse what users find most useful and guide our future development.
- Finally, we’ve also done lots of engineering work that will let us ship more ClaroReads faster over the next year and made it more compliant with modern deployment and security tools in Windows.
Version 9.3
Version 9.3.0 released 12 January 2021.
- Improved language detection.
- Improved Advanced Settings Editor start-up time.
- Removed old TeamViewer support tool.
Version 9.2
Version 9.2.3 released 11 November 2020.
- Add support for Dragon Group speech recognition.
- Spellcheck enhancements.
- Dropped support for saving audio to iTunes (since it is not used).
- A number of stability improvements.
Version 9.1
Version 9.1.0 released 6 October 2020.
- Improve automatic language detection.
Version 9
Version 9.0.37 released 13 July 2020.
New Features
- You can now read Microsoft Outlook 2016 like you read Word: when you are composing an email you can read back with highlighting of your choice (word or sentence, background colours) and when reading an email you have received you get highlighting based on your system colours. In any case you can now read through your emails by pressing Play and simply sitting back as they are read aloud: comfortable and helpful.
- Word prediction now has pictures to help you identify which word you want. Great for spotting which homophone you need to choose so you can write knowing you are getting it right.
- You can now check homophones or confusable words in your whole Word document without having to highlight and unhighlight them. ClaroRead will just take you to the next word you need to check out – it’ll skip super-common words you almost certainly have right, like “I”, though, so it doesn’t take too long. This in-depth check is a perfect complement for a Spellcheck All, which takes you through every definitely-wrong word: pick the check that suits your time and need to get it right (notes versus dissertation submission).
- Also in prediction, new ways to get the right word you want: type H_E and see horse, hearse, hope – any number of letters match _. Type H*T and see hat, hit, hot, hut – one letter matches *. Give you the power to find the right word faster and get on with your writing.
Phonetic prediction now supports more letters too – so “sch” and “sh” can both work for “sheep”. Widens the suggestions that make sense when sounded out but don’t quite match the spelling you are using, so you are more likely to see the word you want.
Changes and Improvements
- If you are using multiple languages in ClaroRead you had to use our “flag” system, where you saw the two languages. Now ClaroRead always uses your system language as your language, and you can select any number of second languages for translation and spellcheck. Just choose from the drop-down in Settings.
- Sign into your Cloud account to unlock ClaroRead: means you don’t need to get the licence key from your account and you can use your Google Microsoft or work/school login.
- Advanced Settings Editor has an empty default template dictionary so it’s easier to create new custom dictionaries.
- New About button in Settings lets you access program details and licensing information more easily.
- The Dictate button is never shown in the toolbar is Dragon is not installed: it will be greyed out in Settings.
- Settings now only has an OK button, no Cancel.
- Restore Settings now deletes (resets) all the settings for every Claro program, including ScreenRuler.
Version 8
Version 8.0.8 released 19 June 2019.
New and Updated
- ClaroRead Standard and Plus individual licences now unlock our Claro Apps on iPhone, iPad and Android.
- Support for speech recognition using Dragon. Dragon must be installed, and the ClaroRead toolbar lets you turn dictation on and off (Plus and Pro).
- Convert from ePub to PDF or Word (Plus and Pro).
- When you type hear phonetic letter sounds for English instead or letter names (e.g. “ah” instead of “ay” for “A”). Female only.
- Auto Converter makes accessible Word or PDF or plain text versions of any document you drop into a designated folder (Plus and Pro)
- Create USB sticks for ClaroRead that work on Mac or Windows with updated ClaroRead USB Creator 2.
- (Swedish) Expanded phonetic spellchecking.
- Improved integration with the ClaroRead Chrome extension, enabling Click and Play to work in Google Chrome, which includes websites, Google Docs, Google Slides and PDF documents.
- More example sentences and homophones in spellcheck.
- Shortcut in the Start Menu for Restore Settings
- More Extras added to ClaroRead
Version 7
Version 7.3.8 (patch) released 24 May 2019
After last update to Adobe Reader DC, ClaroRead stopped being able to Click and Play on PDF documents. This patch should be applied to fix that problem.
Download patch here.
Version 7
Version 7.3.7 released 19 February 2018. Blog Post: ClaroRead V7.3 Released
New Features
- ClaroRead 7.3 features an updated OmniPage scanning/OCR engine. This provides even better document conversion and paper scanning – faster, more reliable and more accurate.
- You can also convert Kurzweil KESI files to PDF or Word.
- ClaroRead 7.3 now saves as the highly-compatible PDF/A format by default.
- Scan-from-screen is faster and speaks better.
- Support for Windows Media Speech voices (Windows 10 Mobile voices). Only per-sentence highlighting is supported, and you cannot change the speed of the voices. But the free Windows Mobile voices on Windows 10 can now be used for reading Microsoft Word, Adobe Reader PDF and other applications: these include high-quality English, Arabic, Swedish and other voices.
- You can only save audio files from Windows Media Speech voices as a WAVE .wav file.
- Non-English users will find translations of English words are shown in the spellcheck dialog when they are selected, unless they are Swedish, in which case they must have Claro Stava installed as well.
- Syllabification for English words is also shown on the definition pop-up dictionary as well as a definition. This can help learners.
- The ClaroRead Chrome extension is automatically installed when you install ClaroRead so you get reading with highlighting and other useful features in Chrome. You can also use your ClaroRead licence key to upgrade ClaroRead Chrome to ClaroRead Chrome Premium to get Scan from Screen and other features on your PC and other machines.
- This applies to the licence key version only, and none of the Swedish versions.
Changes and improvements
- Fixed PDF reading in Adobe Reader DC 2018.009.20050
- Significantly improved PDF reading in all versions of Adobe Reader.
- Toolbar now defaults to floating (with a title bar) instead of locking to the current window.
- Toolbar now provides more space for the control box of windows when locking.
- You can now prevent the installation of the scan-from-screen component by setting the ScanFromScreen feature state in Windows Installer (ClaroRead Plus and Pro only – for ClaroRead SE and Standard, simply do or do not install the optional ScanFromScreen MSI file).
- The desktop shortcut is now an installation choice.
- Fixed CTRL + Hover not recognising non-English characters.
- Removed the Internet Explorer Font and Spacing options.
- Improved homophone entries.
- Very common words like “we’re”, and “in”, “to”, “have” are no longer flagged as homophones by default because you almost certainly spelled/used them correctly. “There” is still shown, because of the high frequency of “they’re” and “their”.
- Fixed CTRL + Hover interfering with holding Control and clicking Play to trigger Play On.
- Minor improvements to thesaurus if on a machine without Microsoft Word.
- Now ships with .pdb file to improve technical support resolution.
- Batch Audio Converter now appears in the Extras menu.
- “Stava” is added to the splash screen and Settings to indicate the Swedish Claro Stava product is installed.
- (Multi-language versions) The selected flag is outlined in Settings so you know what the current selection is.
- Licence keys are saved between installations, so when you upgrade the licence key box is pre-populated with the old licence key. This only works from 7.3.7 onwards.
Version 7
Version 7.2.36 released 7 July 2017. Blog Post: ClaroRead V7.2 Released
New Features
- Play On. Sometimes users might want ClaroRead to keep reading through their document as they switch to other Windows to check things, edit the document as it goes, or just leave it playing in the background. You can now hold down Control when clicking Play or pressing F7 and ClaroRead will go into “Play On” mode, where it will keep playing until you explicitly press Stop or press F8 – even if you use the mouse or press keys or change window or type into the same Word document.
- While Play On is operating you can skip forward to the next sentence forwards by clicking Play or pressing F7 again. (The Play button changes to show you can do this). So you can move quickly through your document, updating it where you need.
- Play On operates in Microsoft Word and LibreOffice. It will always do sentence highlighting.
- Updated Spelling Engine. ClaroRead 7.2 includes an updated spelling engine.
- The updated engine now includes the powerful international HunSpell system, which powers Safari, Google Chrome, and LibreOffice spellcheck.
- Danish, British and US English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, and Swedish are all supported.
- The ClaroRead spelling engine supports spelling in documents (Google Docs, Microsoft Word, LibreOffice) and any other application.
- Dynamic phonetic spelling suggestions. ClaroRead has always supported common phonetic or dyslexic misspellings with an exceptions list derived from years of research. This is highly effective way to target high-frequency phonetic errors. Now ClaroRead includes a dynamic phonetic spellcheck mechanism, so English words that are particularly hard to spell are checked against the phonetics of the user’s word to produce extra suggestions even when the original user’s word is very far removed from the orthography of the targeted word (e.g. “bzr” for “bazaar”).
- To keep things simple the base hard-to-spell word list is set by ClaroRead online, restricted to high-value hard-to-spell words to reduce “false positives”, and is updated as and when required, with no user intervention required. The phonetic suggestions can be disabled entirely in spellcheck settings.
- If a user selects or creates a custom dictionary in Prediction then this custom dictionary will also be used as a source of spelling suggestions – just as it is used to inform spelling results now. So users can create subject-specific phonetic spelling suggestions to help them in their studies and with their new, unfamiliar vocabulary.
- The dynamic phonetic spelling suggestion system supports both UK and US English.
- Compound Words (Swedish). Spelling errors that consist of two words that look correctly-spelled but really should be combined into one, like “straw berry”, are common in Swedish. The new Compound Word feature is available in Swedish only, and will highlight incorrectly-split words when using the Homophone Check feature in ClaroRead.
- The database of compound words is provided by Claro Software online so it can be updated without needing to update ClaroRead (e.g. adding new corrections, identifying one as an error). The database is cached so ClaroRead can still compound-word-check if offline.
- Compound word checking can be turned off in the Homophones setting screen in ClaroRead.
- Compound words are never flagged during typing to keep complexity to a minimum (unlike homophones).
- Compound word checking is only available when checking text in Microsoft Word.
- Speak word under mouse. We know that users like to quickly check the meaning of a word, or hear it read aloud. In ClaroRead 7.1 this means selecting the word, but this can be fiddly, and some words cannot be selected (e.g. in images). ClaroRead 7.2 uses the built-in scan-from-screen that became available to all versions of ClaroRead in 7.1 and gives you the ability to simply hold control, point the mouse and hear any word on the screen read aloud and/or defined with a speaking dictionary.
Changes and Bugfixes
- You can now save audio files in the MP3 format as well as WMA, WAV and OGG.
- To simplify the product for new users, the Font and Spacing buttons are no longer shown by default. You can make them visible by opening Settings, going to the View tab and checking their buttons.
- PDF files now open after scanning in Adobe Acrobat DC.
- If running as a USB stick, does not check Program Files for Extras.
- ClaroRead will be named as “ClaroRead” not “ClaroRead.exe” in Windows settings (e.g. “Select which icons appear in the taskbar”)
- WordRead Plus is still supported as a rebranded ClaroRead Standard. Simply install the Swedish version of ClaroRead Standard and it will appear as “WordRead Plus”. This means two fewer installers to manage (authenticated and network)
- The licence input dialog now appears in the Windows taskbar so you can get (back) to it if you have to enter a licence key.
- An Argentinian Spanish version is now available on installation and defaults to an Argentinian Spanish voice.
- Users can now proceed straight through installation by simply pressing Return (except for having to check the licence agreement.)
- Opening Spellcheck on a correctly-spelled word now shows the word so you can hover and hear it and look it up online and see a definition, even if we have no synonyms for it.
- The Scan tab now has a Reset button to clear all previously-configured scanners. This can be useful for resolving scanner setup issues.
- Installation. If you are (re)installing ClaroRead on a machine that has already been authenticated and licenced with ClaroRead, the licence key already used will be extracted and supplied to the installer for you without having to re-key it. This is helpful when upgrading or reinstalling ClaroRead.
- Re-licensing. If the installed licence key is now expired according to the saved hash, then tries it again from michelle.ini against server. This is to allow us to remotely increase the lifespan of a code by changing the server. ClaroRead will re-authenticate against any stored key, e.g. in michelle.ini.
- System admins no longer face having to re-enter licence keys on networks with keyed ClaroRead installations. Claro can supply a keyed licence key version to a site licence and simply extend the licence on its own servers.
- Dictionary definitions have been widely expanded for Spanish, Dutch and French using Wiktionary.
- Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary are only available when online.
- To improve stability, speak on mouse select no longer operates in Windows Explorer.
- ClaroRead SE no longer overwrites ClaroRead Plus settings if run on the same machine.
- The spellcheck window now defaults to closed in Sweden.
- ClaroRead no longer installs Software ID Tags.
This release adds scan features to ClaroRead Standard and SE, makes every ClaroRead run more smoothly and cleanly, and improves installation and licensing. You can update by downloading ClaroRead 7.1 from ClaroRead Cloud.
Version 7
Version 7.1 released 6 September 2016. Blog Post: ClaroRead 7.1 Released
New features
- ClaroRead 7.1 introduces scan-from-screen from the toolbar into ClaroRead SE and ClaroRead Standard. This was previously restricted to ClaroRead Plus and Pro. Install the optional ScanScreen component and a Scan button will appear on your toolbar, and you can capture text from the screen directly.
- There is now a “Get more voices” option in the voice choice dropdown in Settings if Claro Voice Setup is installed. Selecting this will launch Claro Voice Setup and let you install any of our eighty Vocalizer voices. This applies to keyed versions of ClaroRead only.
- You can now launch Scan from Screen with the key combination Ctrl + Shift + S.
- If you open an S2T Scanning file in ClaroRead Pro and have Preview turned off it will open directly in Proofing without repeating OCR, so your Proofing changes are retained. This lets you work in Proofing, output your changes, check it, and return to Proofing to work on the file again.
Technical changes
- PDF output quality has been adjusted considerably to reduce output file size without significant quality changes.
- Selected text and text from scan-from-screen speaks more naturally.
- Fixed bugs with highlighting and starting/stopping reading in Microsoft Word
- Fixed RealSpeak voices not playing in Internet Explorer.
- RealSpeak voices in the same language (e.g. British English) all now share pronunciations. Useful for USB stick versions using RealSpeak.
- Fixed launching the scanner wizard with the correct OCR language.
- More ways to license ClaroRead with a key (of use to system administrators):
- Can now call ClaroRead.exe with a “-register” commandline and it will silently do online key registration and setup I18N config.ini values on roaming profile for other Claro products to use.
- Can now call ClaroRead.exe with “-register:kjhkjh-2323-ffewf-23423-sdff” to register the licencekey provided silently.
- Can now write a registry key, HKLM\Software\Claro Software\, value REG_SZ LicenceKey, and this will be used to register ClaroRead. A key provided in michelle.ini will be used in preference.
- Can now call ClaroRead.exe with the path to a .clky file containing licence key. .clky files are registered with ClaroRead so you can simply double-click on a .clky file.
- Other changes to licencing system:
- No longer automatically opens Cloud website when registering with a key.
- Calls Claro Voice Setup if a demo voice is installed when you unlock your demo with a key.
- Fixed licence dialog not showing all text in messages for non-English languages.
- Improved definition for “it’s”.
- Improved ClaroRead performance on High-DPI systems: locking to window scales with DPI so no longer attaches to windows that are just too narrow, highlighting in Adobe Reader is correctly placed, the toolbar is still a good size, and the settings form is correctly laid out.
- Prediction dictionaries no longer need to be duplicated: fr-ca will use all fr dictionaries too. This saves about 200MB on installation.
- Users can now export all prediction dictionaries.
- If the user presses a key during speak-on-mouse-select then speak-on-mouse-select is cancelled, so the user’s selection is preserved.
- There is no longer a shortcut to Restore Settings. You can still find it in the program folder.
- Scan2Text and Access2Text now correctly log events in System Event Log.
Known issues
- ClaroRead is not compatible with Data Execution Prevention (DEP). This is only usually a problem on Windows Server, and can be quickly resolved by excluding it from DEP in Control Panel.
- PDF files saved from ClaroRead cannot be automatically opened in Acrobat Reader DC unless you turn off Protected Mode in Acrobat Reader DC. ClaroRead no longer defaults to “view result” to help with this scenario.
Version 7
Version 7.0.16, with Scan2Text version 5.1.17, released 17 August 2015.
New/Changed Features
- New feature, “Change Text Width”, in Spacing menu.
- Enhances readability in Word. People find a short column width easier to read (e.g. newspapers) so Change Text Width makes the Word document into one or two narrow columns.
- New option, “Highlight none” in Highlighting.
- Allows proofing without distraction. Set it reading, listen without losing focus, and just hit Stop when you hear an error. The caret moves with reading so is placed correctly in the sentence for you to fix it.
- With Change Text Width and Highlight None you can turn Word into a scrolling text reader.
- New bundled program, Claro Voice Setup, lets you download and install any of 80 high-quality voices.
- Quickly and easily get French, German, Spanish and other voices, and different accents and genders of English.
- New bundled program, Claro AudioNote, records lectures and notes into your Windows PC
- Our easy-to-use notetaker and personal scribe program now comes with ClaroRead. Record straight into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint presentations, saving the audio straight into the file. Add bookmarks, open recordings from common hardware recorders, and send the recordings to Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
- New feature, ClaroRead Cloud, allows backups and voice and program downloads.
- Open ClaroRead Cloud from the Extras button (not Swedish version).
- Register online and download any Claro Software you want for installation on your Windows or Mac PC.
- Also get all our voices, including new Kate and Oliver British English voices.
- Get ClaroRead for Windows if you had ClaroRead for Mac, or ClaroRead for Mac if you had ClaroRead for Windows.
- Install your copy of ClaroRead onto multiple machines for your personal use.
- You can now disable spellcheck with a registry key or end-user program, great for exams.
- Improvement: scanning can now start with a Word document (requires Office to be installed)
- Improvement: Save to PDF can save as password-protected PDFs.
- Improvement: Combine PDFs and multiple scanned pages together, and come back to a document to add more pages later.
- Improvement: Can save from Preview or Proofing, half-way through scanning, and pick it up later.
- Improvement: Next word prediction ignores minimum character length, so you get more natural sentences generated with next word prediction because you have sensible next-word suggestions, like “the” or “to”.
- Improvement: Scan from screen speaks what’s captured if speak on select is turned on.
- Copies to the clipboard too. Saves another click for users, simpler to use, and scan from screen is now so fast it works brilliantly.
- Improvement: Updated phonetic and dyslexic spelling list, homophones and pictures in spellcheck.
- Now 50,000 custom spelling corrections, disambiguating pictures for every homophone, and new homophones/confusables.
- Improvement: new Swedish prediction dictionaries.
- Improvement: can upgrade demo versions to full versions simply by entering a licence key.
- Also then opens Claro Cloud to allow download of full voices etc.
Technical changes
- ClaroRead 6 licence keys will work with ClaroRead 7, but will have to be re-entered by the user during installation or first run.
- “Save as PDF” in Preview window will save as highest quality PDF by default.
- Speak on mouse select works in BookReader.
- Scanner wizard will correctly restart if you stop scanner setup half-way through.
- Users upgrading from V6.2 keep support for non-English OCR.
- E-acute character now recognised as an E character in prediction.
- Toolbar no longer attaches to ScreenRuler bar.
- Pressing Stop in Word will always stop highlighting correctly.
- Improved prediction in ClaroRead on high load conditions.
- Homophones with smart apostrophes now recognised (e.g. it’s)
- Using the online translation lookup when you have no network connection is handled smoothly.
- Speak on select from complicated PDF file operates cleanly.
- Scan from screen is faster and more reliable.
- If upgrading, will automatically select non-demo version of original demo voice.
- Authenticated version stores licence key for future use.
- You can now point at and hear echoed individual items in the dictionary definition.
- Saving and loading S2T Omnipage files works correctly.
- Send to iTunes correctly appears on 64-bit machines with 64-bit iTunes installed.
- New Swedish defaults for some settings: speak under mouse, background highlighting.
- Works with latest Adobe Acrobat DC.
- Once only, any version 6 and earlier spelling dictionaries will be renamed to .bak. This allows the updated version 7 files to be used, but retain spelling dictionaries in case the user has made some customisations. These .bak files can be deleted from the roaming profile if desired.
- The unkeyed network version no longer installs the ClaroUp updater or the TeamViewer support tool.
- Save to Video is now an optional install, available from the ClaroRead Cloud website.
- The dictionary tooltip now defaults to off, and no longer appears if you double- or triple-click on a word. Instead, simply turn it on (the Check tab) and select a word of interest, or use scan from screen.
- ClaroRead will no longer read PDF files with highlighting open in Internet Explorer. Set Adobe Reader or Acrobat Reader to open files outside the browser instead. This provides more stability and functionality and is in line with Microsoft Edge and Windows 10.
- Users in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland have alternative means to access ClaroRead Cloud apps and services, so do not see ClaroRead Cloud in their Extras drop-down.
- Partners may specify a third-party website in Extras.
- System admins can write HKLM registry keys (HKLM\Software\Claro Software\Language1 and Language2) with per-machine language settings.
- ClaroRead Plus and Pro no longer have a pre-requisite for the installation of the Visual Studio C++ runtimes.
System requirements
- Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10
- .Net 4 Client Framework.
- The bundled ScreenRuler, ClaroCapture, Claro AudioNote and ClaroIdeas all require the .Net 4 Client Framework.
Version 7
Version 7.0.17 released September 2015
This version is identical to 7.0.16 but has a simplified network installer MSI structure suitable for network admins. There is no need to update to 7.0.17 if you have 7.0.16 installed.
Version 7
Version 7.0.21 released 13 October 2015. Blog Post: ClaroRead 7 Released
This version is identical to 7.0.16 but contains updated translations and files for non-English versions. There is no need to update to 7.0.21 if you have 7.0.16 or 7.0.17 installed.
Version 6
Version 6.5 released 28 April 2014
New and improved features
- Much faster screen scanning and capture (Plus and Pro versions).
- Improved support for newer scanners (Plus and Pro versions).
- Improved PDF reading (start position and scrolling).
- “Stop after sentence” now works in Adobe Reader as well as Microsoft Word.
- Added Swedish and French phonetic prediction.
- BookReader and Claro AudioNote now appear in the Extras menu if installed.
- Faster scanning when preview and proofing turned off.
Known Issues
- The authenticated version will ask for the key to be entered during installation even when installing over a previously activated version.
- Homophones which only differ in case (e.g. “March”, “march”) cannot be added to the homophone list using the Advanced Settings Editor.
- If there are two or more PDF files?open in Internet Explorer, only the first one will read and highlight.
- Muting the USB version of ClaroRead causes any audio files produced whilst muted to be silent.
Pre-requisites
- ClaroRead Plus and ClaroRead Pro require both the Visual Studio 2005 (C++ 8.0) and Visual Studio 2010 (C++ 10.0) runtimes. Microsoft Downloads
Version 6
Version 6.4 released 14 March 2013. Blog Post: ClaroRead V6 Refreshed For Summer 2013
New and Improved Features
- More built-in spelling corrections
- More English subject-specific prediction dictionaries (art history, accountancy, mathematics and philosophy)
- New icon set
- Many more pictures to aid with understanding homophones
- Improved output when saving text to video
- More accurate detection of word roots to provide more definitions
- Works with Claro BookReader
ScreenRuler 3
- Overlay mode now displays on all monitors at once
ClaroCapture 3
- Supports dragging and dropping items into the capture list.
- Capturing from Firefox and Chrome now also captures the address of the current web page, just like it does in Internet Explorer.
System Requirements
- Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8
- 1GB RAM
- Hard disk space
- ClaroRead Pro: 1.25GB
- ClaroRead Plus: 1.25GB
- ClaroRead Standard and WordRead Plus: 1GB
- ClaroRead SE and WordRead: 60MB
- 150MB-500MB for each voice
- DVD drive
- Microsoft Word 2003 or later
- Sound Card
- Scanner supporting TWAIN or WIA (ClaroRead Plus and Pro only)
Version 6
Version 6.3 released 12 March 2012
New and Improved Features
- Scanning (OCR) now has ‘Scan from Screen’ option to allow you to select an area of the screen and have the text read back to you.
- Word Prediction improvements (see the Resources section to view the new Prediction Settings screen):
- New word prediction modes:
- Phonetic
- First & contains
- Contains anywhere
- Larger base prediction dictionaries.
- English and Swedish versions only: pre-populated subject-specific dictionaries are installed e.g. Biology.
- The prediction window font and colours can be fully customised.
- Colour background highlighting in Internet Explorer.
- Enhanced pronunciation editor.
- Echoes selected text after double- or triple-clicks.
- Definition tooltips now appear on selection, as well as on Ctrl + hover.
- RealSpeak voices included with ClaroRead have now been upgraded to the new Vocalizer voices from Nuance.
- UK English and American versions only: ClaroIdeas is now included with ClaroRead Standard, Plus and Pro.
- International versions only: Translation of words and phrases in multi-language versions.
Documentation
System Requirements
- Windows 7, XP SP3, Vista SP2
- 1GB RAM
- 1.25GB hard disk space
- DVD drive
- Microsoft Word 2003 or later
- Sound card
- Scanner supporting TWAIN or WIA (Plus and Pro only)
- 150MB – 500MB per voice
New Prediction Settings screen
Version 6
Version 6.2 released March 2011.
Changes since V5.6
- Scan preview shows reading order by default
- When scanning, the Save As button offers more formats, including PDF (accessible, tagged)
- PDF reading with Adobe Reader and Acrobat
- IE9 support
- Pronunciation dictionary now supports non-ANSI characters (e.g. Greek letters) and you can add non-alphanumeric character to the “Original” textbox.
- All ClaroRead versions now have the Dragon echo feature.
- Send to iTunes feature
- You can now click on a word in the tooltip window and it will update to show the meaning of that word
- Lots more picture dictionaries for non-English languages
Version 5
Version 5.6 released 22 August 2011
New Features
- These are maintenance patches only.
Improvements
- Support for the Dragon echo feature for Dragon 11.
- Speech now works with some unusual hardware configurations.
- Personal spelling corrections are shown correctly in spellcheck.
- You can spellcheck only a word if that is selected.
- New shortcut commands have been added for scripting and Dragon support.
- Fixed the occasional “Word Error” message in Word.
- Scanning from paper will always go into the currently-opened Word document, and you will always be able to read it without restarting ClaroRead.
- The Ignore All homophones button always works.
- If you click on a word in the definitions tooltip then it becomes the subject of the tooltip. This lets you quickly look up multiple words.
- Pressing Play in Internet Explorer starts speaking faster.
- Capitalisation and prediction for non-English languages improved.
- Support for Microsoft Word Starter Edition (select and speak only, no highlighting).
- Stability and performance improvements.
- Scanning progress bar is more accurate, scanning faster and more responsive.
Version 5
Released 22 August 2011 . Blog Post: ClaroRead V5 Released
New Features
- (UK Build only) New voice selection. ClaroRead (Plus and Standard) now installs:
- RealSpeak British English Daniel
- RealSpeak British English Serena
- RealSpeak Indian English Sangeeta
- RealSpeak Irish Moira
- RealSpeak Scottish Fiona
- RealSpeak American Tom
- RealSpeak Australian Lee
- RealSpeak Australian Karen
- (English and Swedish only) Speaking Dictionary – get a definition tooltip when you hold control and hover the mouse over a word. Turned on and off by checkbox in the Check tab. Shows English dictionary definitions (WordWeb), and has Google lookup button. Doesn?t disappear when you mouse away, you have to close it ? makes it simpler to keep it on the screen and you can then point at words within the definitions window. You can make it always visible (like the prediction window) with another checkbox on the Check tab. Multiple language support if dictionary is provided by partner or other source.
- Spellcheck Anywhere. Requires Microsoft Word. Select some text ? not in Word ? and click the Check button. Will let you spellcheck any text you can select, but can only replace/correct text if you can paste. The corrected text is left in the clipboard if you want to get it back. All your ClaroRead spelling customisations apply as normal.
- The Advanced Settings Editor lets you back up your settings and restore them. Use the buttons on the General tab. This is helpful for people moving machines or wanting to back up or distribute prediction dictionaries.
- The new update mechanism, ClaroUp, will check for updates every seven days when ClaroRead is started up. It can also be launched manually from the Advanced Settings Editor, General tab. Automatic checking for updates will not be performed if the user is not an administrator (and hence could do nothing about it) or the ?automatically check? checkbox in ClaroUp is unchecked. Patches and full installers for all installed Claro Software can be downloaded and installed. ClaroUp will update itself invisibly if required. Updates can be performed while ClaroUp is running, but other Claro programmes should be closed. Contact Claro Support for network support. ClaroUp will be rolled out across all Claro products in 2010.
- “Next word prediction” now learns from what you type in Word as well as when you use the Prediction Training mechanisms in Advanced Settings Editor.
- The Prediction Training mechanism in the Advanced Settings Editor is (1) much faster and (2) includes word counts, the ability to rename and delete prediction dictionaries, to export word lists, and to turn off spellcheck when adding words.
- Homophone checking word-by-word can now do the entire document with good performance. So you can highlight homophones throughout a multi-paragraph range and then start checking and go through all of them, rather than having to restart at each paragraph break.
- Updated Scan2Text Omnipage engine to 16.3 from 16.2 (16.3 is the same engine as what’s in the Omnipage 17 retail product) for greater accuracy and reliability.
Improvements
- Double right-clicking on the start menu icon will close ClaroRead, even if the toolbar has hung because of a non-responsive SAPI or Windows problem.
- Undock button when docked to top of screen makes it easier to control toolbar position.
- Prediction is much faster to operate, better able to keep up with typing.
- Lots of shortcut keys have been provided to allow for Dragon scripting in the future.
- The ?speak under mouse? function has been upgraded to be more reliable and work more speedily.
- ClaroRead shouldn?t hang when Office (Word, Excel) hangs.
- New low-level mouse hook should work in IE8.
- Calculator on 64-bit machines correctly echoes, and Calculator now works with hex and the ?=? key on the main keyboard.
- Extra definitions shown in the Spellcheck dialogue are now English-variety-specific (e.g. UK English definitions, not US English definitions, are shown in UK installs)
- More symbols are shown for English words in the Spellcheck dialogue (e.g. ?running? gives ?run?).
- You can now dock the toolbar to the top of the screen in Windows 7.
- The prediction window now works on multiple monitors.
- Fixed too-long installation paths preventing installation on some machines.
- Splash screen no longer looks like it has hung while loading.
- When using ?speak when mouse selects? you will no longer hear so many ?dong? error sounds, nor will lists change focus to whatever starts with C.
- Duplicate words in Word when Spellcheck are identified and corrected correctly.
- Your pronunciation dictionary is used when you save to audio, not just when you speak.
- Fixed duplicate spelling corrections being added to the Spelling tab in the Advanced Settings Editor.
- New keyboard system supports key action (e.g. echoing typing, cursoring) in IE8.
- Fixed broken SAPI4 voices preventing ClaroRead from starting up.
- Fixed font sizing/spacing in IE only working once.
- Fixed prediction not appearing when sorted alphabetically and <5 words predicted.
- Right-clicking the prediction window is now independent of the Always Visible checkbox in ASE.
- Fixed cursoring in Excel not working unless you change focus away from Excel and back.
Recommendations for System Builders
- Scanning: please ensure the Scanner Setup Wizard has been run on each computer to configure the customer?s scanner with ClaroRead. You will be shown a selection of scanner drivers to use, the advised scanner driver to use is the TWAIN driver. A couple of exceptions we know of are:
- Plustek Opticbook 3600 Book Scanner: use the WIA driver instead.
- Dell 928 Printer/Scanner/Copier: use the WIA driver instead.
New Features
- New voice selection. ClaroRead now installs:
- RealSpeak British English Daniel
- RealSpeak British English Serena
- RealSpeak Indian English Sangeeta
- RealSpeak Irish Moira
- RealSpeak Scottish Fiona
- RealSpeak American Tom
- RealSpeak Australian Lee
- RealSpeak Australian Karen
- CereProc Scottish Heather (Plus only)
- Support for speech in OpenOffice 2.4 and 3.0. Supported: highlighting by word, word trail, sentence or paragraph; background while highlighting. Not supported: focus sentence, homophone and spell check.
- If run with “-silent” in the command line then runs with the toolbar hidden and no splash screen.
- New shortcut key Ctrl+F12 sets focus on the ClaroRead toolbar. Useful with Ctrl+Q to close the application or using shortcut keys.
- (WordRead Plus only) Clears clipboard when exiting.
- Echo sentence/word/character and prediction now support dead keys and keyboards that are not the same language as the system non-Unicode locale. Non-ASCII characters are now correctly processed.
- Speaking the calculator adds the text to the clipboard, so you can hear the result again by pressing Play.
Improvements
- You can now still play and highlight while ClaroRead is muted.
- Fixed reading in IE not highlighting and hanging ClaroRead.
- Fixed Stava Rex and SpellRight text not being able to be spoken by highlighting.
- Fixed PageUp and PageDown in spellcheck switching between tabs.
- New keyhook system fixes keyhooking working in Internet Explorer 8 (shortcut keys)
- Fixed prediction window showing with invalid suggestions.
- Fixed ClaroRead toolbar docking to top of screen and not displaying all buttons.
- Fixed Help crashing ClaroRead.
- Fixed spelling contenders not being added to Advanced Settings Editor.
- Fixed ClaroRead toolbar being hidden when opening ClaroRead or Advanced Settings Editor or closing Settings dialog.
- Improved speak-under-mouse function to get more text.
- Changing the scanned zones in mulitiple page scans now retains the changes through to the result document.
Recommendations for System Builders
- Scanning: please ensure the Scanner Setup Wizard has been run on each computer to configure the customer’s scanner with ClaroRead. You will be shown a selection of scanner drivers to use, the advised scanner driver to use is the TWAIN driver. A couple of exceptions we know of are:
- Plustek Opticbook 3600 Book Scanner: use the WIA driver instead.
- Dell 928 Printer/Scanner/Copier: use the WIA driver instead.
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