[DECtalk] How to use Say

ebruckert Bruckert edbruckert at gmail.com
Sun Jul 10 16:54:07 EDT 2011


opps, sorry about the microsoft runtime problem thst dimply means it was
co,piled as a debug,
so if I will find one without the need. Since I have the runtime I didn't
notice the problem sorry.

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Jayson Smith <ratguy at insightbb.com> wrote:

> Here's how to use the Say program Ed posted earlier today. Before we even
> get started, you must have a dectalk.dll that's compatible with Say. If you
> have the version of Speak using the first attempt by Enable to create a
> SAPI
> DECtalk which was circulated limitedly a few months ago, you have a
> compatible dectalk.dll. Note that the access32.dll distributed with Window
> Eyes appears not to be compatible. It seems it's been modified probably so
> it can only be used within WE. If you try renaming it to dectalk.dll and
> using say, you're told there are no license units available.
>
> Also you will need a Microsoft Visual C Runtime library. You've probably
> got
> several versions of this all over your system. I used the one from JAWS 11.
> In my case, it's in my settings\enu folder as msvcr71.dll. This needs to be
> renamed to msvcrtd.dll. You'll also need a DECtalk dictionary. Once again,
> if you have the Speak produced earlier this year, you have this. So in
> total, here's the directory listing you need.
>
> dectalk.dll
> dtalk_us.dic
> msvcrtd.dll
> say.exe
>
> Once all these files are in a directory, just run say. Now type something,
> hit Enter, and it will be spoken. Running Say with the /? argument will
> provide help text. For everyone's convenience, I've pasted this help text
> in
> this message. It's a nice little program. Thanks, Ed!
>
> Unfortunately, as far as I know there's no way to use this with DECtalk
> 4.3,
> since speak43.exe seems to have the DECtalk code bundled in itself rather
> than as a separate DLL. Now here's the Say help text. Hope you can use it.
> Jayson
>
> SAY  [options] [text]
>
> Help Options:
>
>    -h or -?          = Help.  Outputs this file to the console.  This
>                        option cancels any others on the command line.
>
>
> Output Options:
>
>    -w outFile        = Convert text into specified wave file instead of
>                        speaking to the sound device.
>
>    -l[t] outFile     = Turn on text logging, which logs all input text
>                        to a file.  This text includes any pre and post
>                        commands as well as commands sent to DECtalk by
>                        the SAY program itself.
>
>                        Since this is the default logging mode, the 't'
>                        immediately following the '-l' is optional.
>
>    -ls outFile       = Turn on syllable logging, which logs each
>                        syllable to a  file.
>
>    -lp outFile       = Turn on phoneme logging, which converts the
>                        input text to phonemes.  This is useful if you
>                        want to get DECtalk to sing.  You convert the
>                        text to phonemes and then insert the tone
>                        commands into the phoneme file.
>
>    If no output options are specified, SAY sends its output to the
>    installed sound device, ususally a sound card.  Only one output
>    option can be specified; if you specify more than one, the last one
>    on the command line is used.
>
>
> Input Options:
>
>    -pre preText      = Text to be passed to DECtalk before the normal
> input.
>                        This is useful for passing initializing commands to
>                        DECtalk that would normally not be part of the
> input.
>                        If the prefix text has spaces, it must be enclosed
> in
>                        quotes.  An example would be "[:phoneme on]" or
>                        "[:nb :ra200]".
>
>                        The prefix text is "forced" out before the input
> text
>                        is read.
>
>    -post postText    = Text to be passed to DECtalk after the normal input.
>                        This is useful for passing terminating commands to
>                        DECtalk that would normally not be part of the
> input.
>                        If the postfix text has spaces, it must be enclosed
>                        in quotes.  An example would be "[:phoneme off]" or
>                        "The End".
>
>                        The "normal" input is "forced" out before the
> postfix
>                        text is read.
>
>    text              = Text appearing on command line is spoken.  The text
>                        to be spoken can either come from the standard
>                        input or from the command line.
>
>                        Anything on the command line that is not an option
>                        will be interpreted as text, as will anything
> following
>                        it on the command line.  In other words, text to
>                        be spoken must appear on the command line after
>                        all options.
>
>                        If the *first* word in the text has a dash (-) or
>                        slash (/) as its first character, you must precede
>                        it with another dash or slash.  For example, to tell
>                        DECtalk to say the number -123, you would type the
>                        command
>
>                          SAY --123
>
>                        This is necessary to avoid having SAY interpret the
>                        number as a command line option.
>
>                        If you embed DECtalk commands into your text, you
> must
>                        enclose them in quotes if they contain spaces.
>                        This is because SAY treats each space-delimited
>                        command-line argument as a separate "word",
>                        while DECtalk commands must be processed as
>                        single "words" by the SAY program.
>
>    If no text is specified, SAY will take its input from the standard
> input.
>    For example, you could have SAY speak a directory listing in Betty's
>    voice by typing
>
>        DIR | SAY -pre "[:nb]"
>
>    or you could just type the command
>
>        SAY
>
>    and then enter text at the console.  In this case, SAY speaks each
>    line after you press RETURN, and exits after you press CTRL-Z.  If
>    you want SAY to take its input from a file, use file redirection as
>    in the following example, which reads the file FOO.TXT in Harry's
>    voice.
>
>        SAY -pre "[:nh]" < FOO.TXT
>
>
> Dictionary Options:
>
>    -d userDict       = Loads the specified user dictionary before
>                        speaking.  This dictionary is loaded in place of
>                        any default user dictionary determined by DECtalk.
>
> Version information:
>
>    -v                = Displays the version of the dll.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> DECtalk mailing list
> DECtalk at bluegrasspals.com
> http://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>
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