Description:

This driver does not control a device, it allows you to invoke Window's Text to Speech functionality. If you just want to invoke Text to Speech locally, you can just do so via the macro language. This driver allows you to invoke it remotely on other machines than the one on which your action is running.

Text to Speech support is available out of the box in Windows XP, but not on Windows 2000, so you must install the support on W2K yourself before this driver will work. This driver will use the default voice that is set on the local machine, so set the default voice to whatever you prefer and that will be used.

This driver can do a simple invocation of a line of text, but it can also do some more advanced things like repeating a message, and repeating a message with a counter in it.

Quirks and Limitations:

The driver invokes speech asynchronously, meaning it just hands it off to the operating system and returns immediately, and subsequent speech just backs up behind that. So if you go crazy and start sending it text far faster than it can take it, it will eventually give up on you, not to mention blather on for minutes and minutes while the queued up speech completes.

Windows supports a sort of 'markup language' that you can use to affect the character of the speech, to make it more natural or provide various inflections. This driver passes no judgment on the text you send to be spoken, and will just pass on whatever you provide.

Note that this driver, like all drivers, runs under a service. On Windows Server the default account that services run under (the Local System account) does not by default have all the rights that it does on client machines, and text to speech is one of them. So on a server machine you will need to either run the CQC service under a different account, or grant the local system account text to speech rights.

Connection Details

Since this driver doesn't control a device really, it doesn't have any connection configuration issues, or than those mentioned above about insuring that Text to Speech support is available on the machines on which you install this driver.

Driver Fields

This section lists the fields that the driver makes available, their types, minimum and maximum values, etc...

Name	Type	R/W	Description/Limits
SayText	String	W	Send a string of text to the driver to be spoken. It is handed to the driver asynchronously, as is.
SetRepeatPhrase	String	W	Set a phrase that is to be repeated periodically according to the repeat interval. To stop a repeated phrase, write an empty string to this field, which will clear the repeat phrase text.
SetRepeatInterval	Card	W	Sets the number of seconds between each repeat of the repeat phrase. Set this before setting the repeat phrase so that it is in place and ready to be used.
SetCountDown	Card	W	Used in countdown processing. See below for the details of how countdowns are used.

Countdowns

If you put a %(c) replacement token in the repeat phrase, it will be replaced with a countdown counter, which represents a time in seconds. So if you write 30 to this field and 5 to the interval field, and then write "Self destruct in %(c) seconds" to the repeat phrase field, this will cause the driver to repeat, for instance, "Self destruct in 30 seconds", "Self destruct in 25 seconds", and so on, ever 5 seconds, until the counter zeros out. When the counter zeros, the repeat phrase will be cleared automatically.

This feature can be used for things like a counter telling how long remains to disarm an alarm after entering the home.