Speech sythesis not working

[mowergun]

Hi,

I downloaded the evaluation version of TDS-3 today and installed it. I then bought it, but I have not received my key yet. I downloaded the spchapi.exe file and executed it and also pasted a copy of it into the TDS directory. I rebooted and then opened TDS-3 and tested all 21 voices and heard nothing. How can I get speech synthesis in TDS-3 to work?

Thank you,

Mowergun

[Jooske]

Hello Mowergun and welcome!

The keyfile can be expected soon, as our Aussie friends started their working day when we might have thought of going to sleep for the night!

Which windows version are you running?
The spchapi also needs to be ran to connect available speech engines to TDS.
Further on XP systems you need temporary to close the SAPI5 (in the control panel) to enable SAPI4 to work. These are different technologies, the sapi5 is no upgrade for sapi4.
You might have to get and install the other engines from the msagent site
www.microsoft.com/msagent
Please tell if this is a solution so we can look further if necessary!

[mowergun]

Hi,

I am running windows 98SE. The spchapi.exe file I downloaded was version 4.71.1120.0. I double clicked on it and it seemed to extract files to somewhere. BTW, when I had TDS-3 open, I noticed Agentsvr.exe was also running. I never saw that run before. I am going to bed now as I work nights, but I'll check back in about 20 hours after work tonight.

Mowergun

[Jooske]

Ok, in win98 it is easier, nothing to do with the SAPI5 and you can install all the msagents components if you like to use them -- several people wrote nice scripts to run from TDS for entertainment and for real useful functions; if you grab the scripts pack from the TDS download site you will find some examples using speech and/or msagents, making TDS sing, whatever.
You can test via that configuration GUI if the speech works as you want (press TEST button) or type in the bottom of TDS something like
speak "Hello Mowergun!"
<enter>
I grabben the whole lot from that msagents site except for languages i don't speak at all.

[mowergun]

Hi,

I went to the http://www.microsoft.com/msagent page and tried the demonstration but I got a dialog box that stated that peedy could not be loaded. I noticed that at the top of the dialog box it said vbs script. I have windows scripting host either disabled or uninstalled, could this be the problem?

Mowergun

[Jooske]

Did you download the character files from the msagent site, which are Peedy, Merlin, Genie and Robby? For those demo's and in the samples scripts on that site you need them all. For the TDS fun scripts i use most of time Genie because he's blue and blue seems Wayne's favorite color --and to avoid all users have a whole agents collection--.. although for the Australian scripts in the private forum at times i use some Australian characters like from the www.e-clips.com.au site.
Hope getting the MS characters and putting them in the default directory windows\msagent\chars helps you through those very interesting demo's!
TDS opened for me the world to speech and msagent technology --beside to security for which i have it in the first place of course!
If this all works, find in the TDS scripts in the UserSubmitted the InnerPeace script as a demo to play msagent scripts via TDS.

Hope this helps!

You can easily test if VBS is working by typing in the bottom of TDS
msgbox "this is a vbs script!"
which should popup a little box on your screen.
If you have the protection from WormGuard there is not any need to cripple windows with blocking the scripting functions, fortunately!

[mowergun]

Hi,

Thank you for your help. I downloaded the peedy character file to my Msagent directory and then executed the file and then downloaded the english text to speech engine and executed that and now I can hear a voice greeting when I open tds-3.

As you said, now I am interested in all the possibilities associated with Msagent.

Thank you,
Mowergun

[Jooske]

Can imagine, it opened a whole new world for me, not just for fun but i see very professional uses for it. And several functions we can create with the scripts in TDS.
I've seen agents reading your email or web pages, or in a program for disables people to speak for them, surfing around and open programs voice commanded, play music and tell jokes, open the TDS helpfile and in TDS alerting you on more serious things then telling it is hungry. Did you get the InnerPeace script running with Genie already? :)
PS: to run the scripts (certainly those over 5kb) you need to register TDS
Can tell you, TDS makes security fun again as we do know ourselves very well protected and added options for a very nice approach. I'm sure you'll find good uses for the speech and msagent in many ways on your system.
You can tell the agent to update TDS, send email, tell the time, whatever you like. Oh and to sing you a birthday song of course.