[bksvol-discuss] Openbook TTS
- From: talmage@xxxxxxxxxx
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:56:24 -0500
OK, I might as well beat this dead horse!
For those using Openbook, and interested in using SAPI TTS, read on if you
don't know how to get it going.
To use SAPI 4 & 5 speech engines in Openbook, the FAQ Document I got from
the Freedom Scientific web site said:
>1. Using Modify from the OpenBook CD, you should install Microsoft SAPI.
You must make >that the default synthesizer at this point. This
>will add a new file
>to the OpenBook directory called SSILSAPI.INI.
Yes it did, but what they didn't mention is that it will also add a copy of
SSILSAPI.INI to my Windows XP directory, and that it will totally ignore
the one in the Openbook directory.
They also said:
>2. After Microsoft SAPI is installed for OpenBook, you should edit the
SSILSAPI.INI file >to remove the semicolon in front of the line that says
"engine=show".
>This allows the pop-up dialog to be displayed when OpenBook is launched.
Well this turned out to be total nonsense.
They didn't point out that you needed to remark out the line:
engine=IBM ViaVoice Text-To-Speech
under the
[engine]
section, which seems to be written to the file as a default.
They did have the line:
;SAPI engine name here prevents non-talking dialog box asking your engine
choice
under the Engine heading in the file, but it seems a bit odd they neglected
to mention it in the FAQ.
They also said it was necessary to:
>remove the semicolon in front of the line that says "engine=show".
>This allows the pop-up dialog to be displayed when OpenBook is launched.
Well if you remove that semi colon from there and don't put one in front of
the ViaVoice line, you'll still never get that pop-up screen. Even if you
don't remove the semi colon, but still put one in front of the ViaVoice
line, the pop-up will be displayed anyhow since Openbook can't tell which
synthesizer to use.
I also found that if I renamed the SSILSAPI.INI file, the pop-up screen
would display, but the program still won't look in the Openbook directory
for that file..
Another odd thing about the pop-up, is that I was getting it twice, and I
had to select the SAPI engine both times.
One nice thing they neglected to mention however, is that if you have other
screen reading software, the pop-up will read in it, at least with Jaws. I
guess the pop-up is showing up before the main Openbook program is run,
which is when Jaws goes into sleep mode.
I've yet to figure out how to use the Microsoft SAPI5 TTS, as it doesn't
seem to show up in the pop-up.
I did however have an entry for:
Microsoft Speech Synthesis Engine
which turned out to be for the MS SAPI4 engine. When I uninstalled the MS
SAPI4 from my system, this line disappeared from the pop-up screen, but MS
SAPI5 was still installed and MS Narrator worked fine.
The following is the SSILSAPI.INI file in my Windows directory that works
fine with any of the SAPI engines I have installed on my system. All you
have to do is move the semi colon so only the one you want to use doesn't
have one, and contrary to what I thought yesterday, you can't change
between them while you are in Openbook.
------------
[engine]
;SAPI engine name here prevents non-talking dialog box asking your engine
choice
;engine=IBM ViaVoice Text-To-Speech
;engine=Microsoft Speech Synthesis Engine
engine=TruVoice
;engine=K&L TTS3000
;use this to always pop up a (non-talking) dialog box showing available engines
;engine=show
;this is required to preserve language numbers for multiple languages
list_all_languages=1
;this can be changed to adjust when spacing begins to be added between words
slowest_word_rate=110
------------
Now for all those that have read this message till this point, who don't
have any interest in Openbook or SAPI TTS, you are surely gluttons for
punishment, probably confused by my explanation, and almost certainly bored
to tears.
You should have just whacked the delete key!
Dave
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