Text to Speech

9 Mar 2006 8:20 PM

Doug van Vianen

Hi,

Some time ago a messge was posted showing some simple code that one can use
to
convert text to speech using VB6. There was no question posted with the
code so
being curious I decided to try it. It worked fine. Now I have a couple of
questions.

The program uses the Microsoft Speech Object Library which I added as a
reference in the VB6 program.

To create the voice the following coding is used:

Private SP As SpVoice
Set SP = New SpVoice

Then the following is used when a command button is clicked:

Dim thetext as string

thetext="Hello there"
SP.Speak thetext

This coding works fine but I would like to know how to determine when
the speech is finished and also how to change the voice. I noticed that
besides SP.Speak there is SP.WaitUntilDone and SP.Voice and others
but do not know how to use them.

Can someone give me some suggestions? Thank you.

D. van Vianen

9 Mar 2006 8:43 PM

Jeff Johnson [MVP: VB]

"Doug van Vianen" <cour***@shaw.ca> wrote in message

news:W50Qf.128361$H%4.59508@pd7tw2no...

> Can someone give me some suggestions? Thank you.

Does this help at all?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/SAPI51sr/html/Welcome.asp

9 Mar 2006 8:48 PM

Saga

Yeah, I typed in the VB code too. I also was not satisfied so
I did a litle research into the MS SAPI and found this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/speech/download/sdk51/

There is a download for documentation (2.8). This might
help you. Unfortunately other matter kept me moving
forward with this, but it did pique my interest.

I did notice thatthe All distrib files are 130MB. I
compiled and generated a package for my tiny test app
and the only component it added was the SAPI.DLL
file.

I too had a few questions, the first being if there was
a way to build the text so that it could sound better.

I tested with beak and steak Although both word have the
ea vowels, their sound is different. The TTS did know
to to pronounce each word correctly, although I wonder
if it pronouced the author's name correctly, since it was
an unconventional name (with respect to the English language).

Good luck!
Saga

"Doug van Vianen" <cour***@shaw.ca> wrote in message

news:W50Qf.128361$H%4.59508@pd7tw2no...
Show quoteHide quote

> Hi,
>
> Some time ago a messge was posted showing some simple code that one
> can use to
> convert text to speech using VB6. There was no question posted with
> the code so
> being curious I decided to try it. It worked fine. Now I have a couple
> of questions.
>
> The program uses the Microsoft Speech Object Library which I added as
> a
> reference in the VB6 program.
>
> To create the voice the following coding is used:
>
> Private SP As SpVoice
> Set SP = New SpVoice
>
> Then the following is used when a command button is clicked:
>
> Dim thetext as string
>
> thetext="Hello there"
> SP.Speak thetext
>
> This coding works fine but I would like to know how to determine when
> the speech is finished and also how to change the voice. I noticed
> that
> besides SP.Speak there is SP.WaitUntilDone and SP.Voice and others
> but do not know how to use them.
>
> Can someone give me some suggestions? Thank you.
>
> D. van Vianen
>
>

10 Mar 2006 5:33 AM

mayayana

Show quote Hide quote

> Some time ago a messge was posted showing some simple code that one can
use
> to
> convert text to speech using VB6. There was no question posted with the
> code so
> being curious I decided to try it. It worked fine. Now I have a couple of
> questions.
>
> The program uses the Microsoft Speech Object Library which I added as a
> reference in the VB6 program.
>
> To create the voice the following coding is used:
>
> Private SP As SpVoice
> Set SP = New SpVoice
>
> Then the following is used when a command button is clicked:
>
> Dim thetext as string
>
> thetext="Hello there"
> SP.Speak thetext
>
> This coding works fine but I would like to know how to determine when
> the speech is finished and also how to change the voice.

Set the Voice property.

> I noticed that
> besides SP.Speak there is SP.WaitUntilDone and SP.Voice and others
> but do not know how to use them.
>

Speak has a second parameter:

SpVoice.Speak(
     Text As String,
     [Flags As SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags = SVSFDefault]
) As Long

   The Flags parameter lets you adjust things like
whether to finish speaking the current buffer before
speaking new text.

   If you download the SAPI5.1 SDK you'll find there's a good
help file with it. (Note that it only works on XP. You
need to install the support files on other systems. All
except Win95 can handle installing SAPI5 support.There
are 3rd-party companies that provide installers of about
10 MB. Microsoft doesn't supply any installer at all.
According to MS, if you want to ship SAPI you're
supposed to download about 100 MB of merge modules
and use them to make an MSI!)