TTS Updates

[Tony Tofts]

Hi all,

The tts.basic schema has been extended, but will work fine with existing
app's, to this:

TTS.BASIC
{
SPEECH=<text to announce>
[VOLUME=<0 to 100>]
[SPEED=<-10 to 10>]
[VOICE=<name of voice to use>]
}

My VB6 and .NET TTS applications at www.xplhal.com have been updated to
support these extra options

They also now have config items which may be used to set the prefered
defaults, VOLUME= (default=100) SPEED= (default=0) VOICE=
(default="")

Where there is no default voice configured, and no voice is included in the
xpl message, the applications will use the first voice returned when
enumerating the available voices.

Also, the applications will try to match the voice exactly to one
available,
but if not found, then the first voice containing the text in voice= will
be
chosen. So 'Microsoft Mary' and 'Mary' should be the same thing. If no
match
is made, the voice used is the first available.

Before starting the new applications, it is recommended that the
config/vendor files in the xplhal data/config and data/vendor folders for
the tts application are deleted. This will allow xplhal to recognise the
new
config items.

If updating an existing .net version, stop the service, copy the xpltts.exe
and xpllib.dll to the folder where it is currently installed, then restart
the service. Alternatively, un-install the existing version and re-install
from the msi file.

Please note, when these applications are used for the first time with a new
voice, there is a delay while the speech engine builds it's references.
Once
any particular voice has been used at least once, it is fine from then on.
Swapping between voices or restarting the application - once the voices
have
been used at least once - does not have any delay.

The rio software &amp; xpl_riotts application will be modified to
support these
additional options as time allows.

Regards
Tony