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APPENDIX F SPEECH SYNTHESIZERS Vocal-Eyes is a very easy to get along with screen reader. By that we mean, it works with many voice synthesizers. Vocal-Eyes was not written for a specific synthesizer however, it takes advantage of each synthesizers unique features. Some screen readers only work with one synthesizer and others require you to get a completely different version for each synthesizer you wish to use. In our minds, this is not acceptable. Here are the synthesizers Vocal-Eyes directly supports: - Sounding Board by GW Micro - All Accent boards by Aicom Corporation - All artic boards compatible with SONIX.COM and TTS.COM by Artic Technologies - Apollo by Dolphin Systems - Braille 'n Speak by Blazie Engineering - DECtalk by Digital Equipment Corporation - Portable DECtalk by The Childrens Hospital - Echo PC and GP by Street Electronics - Internal ECHO PC+ and MC and 1000 by Street Electronics - DoubleTalk PC by RC Systems - Audapter by Personal Data Systems - ASP by Automated Speech Functions - Personal Speech System versions A and B by Votrax - Prose 4000 by Speech Plus Incorporated - Votalker by Votrax Did you see your synthesizer in this list? If not, all is not lost. There is a Generic option which will probably work. Many of you may say, "Sure it will work but I will not be able to use any of its features such as rate, pitch, volume and most of all the silence command." Fear not, you can setup what Vocal-Eyes should send for each of the 10 possible rates, 10 volume levels, 10 pitch levels, 26 tones, silence string and even an initialization string. Chances are, we already fully support the synthesizer you are using. But if not, as you can see, you can customize the generic option to your individual synthesizer. If your synthesizer supports all of the above commands, Vocal-Eyes will use them. When you first startup Vocal-Eyes, it scans memory for your synthesizer driver. First, Vocal-Eyes will search for the Sounding Board software. If it does not find it, it will look for one of the supplied synthesizer drivers. Each of these drivers will be discussed in detail later in this appendix. The Sounding Board is the only synthesizer which does not require one of the supplied drivers. If you are using a synthesizer other than the Sounding Board, the corresponding driver must be loaded prior to loading Vocal-Eyes. If no synthesizer was found, you will get the message "Synthesizer driver not loaded" and Vocal-Eyes will not be loaded. If you are using the Sounding Board, issue the commands to get it going. If you are using another synthesizer load the proper driver. Now rerun Vocal-Eyes and this time it will work. Notice you do not have to tell Vocal-Eyes what port your synthesizer is located in. Vocal-Eyes gets all the information it needs directly from the synthesizer driver automatically. Below is a list of each synthesizer and what is required in order to use it with Vocal-Eyes. Also, any unique features relating to each synthesizer will be discussed. If you require any further information relating to your synthesizer, please refer to your synthesizer's owners manual. SOUNDING BOARD The Sounding Board is by far the best choice if you require an extremely responsive synthesizer. Every feature Vocal-Eyes supports, the Sounding Board handles. In fact, the Sounding Board hot keys can be used to enhance Vocal-Eyes performance. Fastforward and Rewind work great. If you press either the increase or decrease hot keys for the rate or volume, Vocal-Eyes will also, automatically adjust the screen voice setting accordingly. The only hot key which will not work with Vocal-Eyes is the punctuation hot key. This is because Vocal-Eyes uses a much more sophisticated punctuation scheme. Vocal-Eyes therefore automatically disables this hot key. You may wish to use the Sounding Board's hot key redefinition feature to undefine the punctuation hot key since it will not work with Vocal-Eyes anyway. Feel free to setup and use all of the hot keys as you see fit. The Rate, Volume, Pitch and Tone commands all map exactly into the Sounding Board commands. For example a Vocal-Eyes rate of 7 matches exactly rate 7 of the Sounding Board. In order to use the Sounding Board, you must load the programs SBLOAD.COM and SB.COM. These programs are supplied with the disk you received with your Sounding Board. However, the very latest version is also on your Vocal-Eyes disk. Vocal-Eyes requires version 2.0 or greater. If you try and use Vocal-Eyes with an earlier version of the Sounding Board software, you will get an error message and Vocal-Eyes will not be loaded. Simply replace the version you were using with the version supplied on your Vocal-Eyes disk. Therefore, assuming you don't require any Sounding Board command line parameters, you would have to type the following at the DOS prompt: SBLOAD SB Now simply start Vocal-Eyes in the usual manner. Vocal-Eyes will take over from here. If you are using macros and have the MACRO.COM program loaded you will notice when you enter Review Mode by pressing the fast review key, not only do the macro keys no longer work, the Sounding Board hot keys also no longer work. If you enter via the Review hot key, both the macro and the Sounding Board hot keys work as always. This is done on purpose for those using macros. NON SOUNDING BOARD USERS As we said earlier, all synthesizers except for the Sounding Board, you must load the supplied driver. Although we are referring to these as drivers, you do not load them in the CONFIG.SYS. These are actually .COM files which are loaded directly from the DOS prompt. The following lists all device drivers and what synthesizers they are to be used with. All ACCENT synthesizers ACCENT.COM Apollo (external) APOLLO.COM Apollo (internal) INAPOLLO.COM Artic boards which use SONIX.COM and TTS.COM ARTIC.COM ASP VEASP.COM Audapter AUDAPTER.COM Braille 'n Speak BNSPEAK.COM DECtalk DECTALK.COM DoubleTalk PC DBLTALK.COM Echo PC or Echo GP ECHOPC.COM Internal Echo PC+, MC or 1000 INTECHO.COM Prose 4000 PROSE4.COM Personal Speech System version A PSSA.COM Personal Speech System version B PSSB.COM Portable DECtalk PDECTALK.COM Votalker ARTIC.COM All other synthesizers GENERIC.COM The appropriate device driver must be loaded before you load Vocal-Eyes. The following describes the available command line parameters which can be used for any of the above drivers. /!Cn or /!Ln (Port assignment) Certain synthesizers require you to specify the port which they are connected to. If this is the case, you must include this command on the command line. If you do not specify this parameter and your particular synthesizer requires it, you will get the following error message. Speech port not specified! Don't worry if you get this error message, simply issue the command again. But this time include the port assignment command. This parameter informs Vocal-Eyes to which port your synthesizer is connected. Enter this parameter by typing /! and then following it with either a C or an L (C standing for COM port and L for LPT port) and a number designating the number of the port. /!C1, for instance, informs Vocal-Eyes that your synthesizer is connected to COM1. /!L3, on the other hand, designates LPT3 as the appropriate port. You can specify any of the three LPT ports 1-3 or any of the four COM ports 1-4. Drivers which require a port assignment are: All Accent synthesizers, external Apollo, ASP, Audapter, Braille 'N Speak, DECtalk, Portable DECtalk, Echo PC, Personal Speech System and Generic. Drivers which do not require a port assignment are: Internal Apollo, Artic, Votalker, DoubleTalk PC, Internal Echo and Prose 4000. If you specify a port on any of these drivers, it will be ignored. /!Bn (Baud rate assignment) This parameter informs Vocal-Eyes the baud rate of your synthesizer. If you are using a parallel synthesizer, or one which did not require a port assignment, this command will be ignored. If you do not specify this parameter, the device driver will default to 9600 BAUD. If you wish to use the command, use one of the following forms: /!B1 = 1200 baud /!B2 = 2400 baud /!B3 = 300 baud /!B4 = 4800 baud /!B9 = 9600 baud /!Pn (Parity assignment) This parameter informs Vocal-Eyes the parity required by your speech synthesizer. If you are using a parallel synthesizer, or one which did not require a port assignment, this command will be ignored. Enter N for No parity, O for Odd parity or E for Even parity after the /!P. For example, /!PO would signal odd parity and /!PN would signal no parity. If you do not use this parameter, the device driver will default to no parity. /!Dn (Data bits assignment) This parameter informs Vocal-Eyes the number of data bits required by your speech synthesizer. If you are using a parallel synthesizer, or one which did not require a port assignment, this command will be ignored. Enter /!D7 for 7 data bits or /!D8 for 8 data bits. If you do not use this parameter, the device driver will default to 8 data bits. /!Sn (Stop bits assignment) This parameter informs the number of stop bits required by your speech synthesizer. If you are using a parallel synthesizer, or one which did not require a port assignment, this command will be ignored. Enter /!S1 for 1 stop bit or /!S2 for 2 stop bits. If you do not use this parameter, the device driver will default to 1 stop bit. EXCEPTION DICTIONARY With Vocal-Eyes even if your synthesizer does not directly support an exception dictionary, you can still set one up. Each driver supports a user exception dictionary. Those of you familiar with the Sounding Board will feel at home with this feature as it was modeled after it. Of course no matter which voice synthesizer you will be using, there will always be unusual words, specialized terms, proper names, and symbols that it will not pronounce exactly as you might like. For that reason, we've given you an ability to add your own custom dictionaries of exceptional words. You must first create a standard ASCII file containing the exceptional word(s) and a mis-spelling of the word(s) that sounds proper. For example, if you would like to have the abbreviation "lb" to be spoken as "pounds" and the roman numeral VI to be spoken as "6", enter these four lines in an ASCII file: lb pounds vi 6 Note: Upper or lower case is not important. Enter the correct spelling that is mis-pronounced on the first line, and the mis-spelling that sounds better on the following line. Give this file a meaningful name, and save it on disk. How about "VE.DIC." You'll probably find the exception dictionary feature quite useful for abbreviations, roman numerals, acronyms, and proper names. As was said earlier, this file must be in a standard ASCII format. If you are using a word processor, make sure you pick this option when saving. If you are using Noteworthy, simply save it as you would save any file. Noteworthy is perfect for this type of editing as well as batch files. There are a few rules of what can and can not be in this file. 1) Each entry must take two lines in the file. The correctly spelled word on line one and the mis-spelled word on line two. 2) The first line (correctly spelled word) can ONLY contain letters A-Z and the apostrophe. No other symbols are allowed. 3) The second line (mis-spelled word) can contain any standard printable characters including spaces. Let us see how to use the feature. When you first startup your specific synthesizer driver for your current session, it will attempt to load the dictionary file called "VE.DIC" by default. Assuming the file exists, it will automatically be loaded and used. Nothing is required other than loading the specified driver as you have always done. However, if you wish to load a file with a different name you will need to use the following command line parameter: Parameter: /Efilename The synthesizer driver will load an ASCII file containing new rules for text-to-speech translation by using the "E" parameter. "filename" can be any valid DOS file specification, including drive and directory information. For example, if you are using an ECHO PC synthesizer and you wanted to load a dictionary file called 'LOTUS.DIC' on the C: drive under the directory called 'LOTUS', you could issue the command: ECHOPC /EC:\LOTUS\LOTUS.DIC After the dictionary is loaded successfully, the driver will confirm its acceptance of the new rules with a message. Remember, by default, the first time the driver is issued it will look for a file called "VE.DIC" on the DOS default log path, and load it, if it's located there. The number of new rules that can be added depends on a buffer setting. The default buffer size will accommodate approximately thirty to forty entries. If there was a problem while trying to load the dictionary, you could receive one of the two error messages: * Dictionary load error * * Dictionary format error * The Dictionary load error means the driver could not find the specified file name or the file was too large for the supplied buffer. Verify the file exists and your buffer is large enough to hold the supplied dictionary. The format error indicates that you did not follow the above rules while creating the dictionary file. Verify that the file is an ASCII format and the two entries contain valid characters. Previously, we said the default buffer size would allow around thirty to forty entries. This number of course depends on the size of the words you are defining but it also depends on the buffer size. The drivers allocate 512 characters of storage for dictionary entries by default. Depending on the size of each entry, this allocation will accommodate up to approximately 40 entries. The arithmetic here is 512/12=42. We are using six characters as the average word size, and we are doubling that to encompass the mis-pronounced word and the properly pronounced substitute. Should you find this allocation to be too small, use the exception dictionary buffer parameter to increase the size of the buffer as needed. To adjust the buffer size, use the following command: Parameter: /!Ex Notice the ! (exclamation point). As always, since this command contains the exclamation point it can only be issued the first time you startup your driver each session. The x is a number between 0 and 9. The number determines how many 512 character chunks to allocate as part of the buffer. The default is 1 or 512 characters. For example, if you wanted to triple the number of possible entries, the command would read like this: DBLTALK /!E3 The "E" in this parameter stands or "exception", and the number corresponds to some multiple of 512 characters. Notice that the dictionary buffer can be set to 0 characters. This is because if you do not wish to use an exception dictionary file, you should not be penalized by taking valuable memory. Therefore if you are not using an exception dictionary, use the command: DBLTALK /!E0 This will set the buffer size to 0 freeing up a valuable 512 characters. Of course, you will not be able to load any exception dictionary though. You can if you wish combine both commands to increase the buffer size and load the actual file on one command line. Because you will be issuing the /!Ex parameter, this must be done the first time the driver is loaded each session. For example: DBLTALK /!E5/EWP This will load the DoubleTalk PC driver and increase the exception dictionary buffer to 5*512 bytes or 4 1/2K. It will then load the file WP.DIC. REFRESH COMMAND The final command line parameter allows you to fine tune how the driver communicates to your synthesizer. The driver is constantly sending commands to your synthesizer. However, with interruptability enabled with Vocal-Eyes, those commands may not be noticed by the synthesizer. Therefore, the driver will occasionally send the entire command sequence every so often to ensure the synthesizer is in the correct mode. Actually, after every ten silence commands this happens. If you are using a synthesizer which takes some time to digest the new commands, you may notice an annoying pause at certain times. Therefore, the following command can be used to disable this feature. Be aware however, it may be possible for your synthesizer to get stuck in a wrong rate or pitch for instance. Normally, this is not a problem unless you have your keyboard and screen voices different from each other. If they are the same, your synthesizer should always be in the correct mode. Parameter /Rx (x=0 or 1) 0=disable, 1=enable. The default is enable. This means Vocal-Eyes will occasionally send out the entire command sequence to the synthesizer to guarantee it is set properly. To cause the driver to disable this feature, issue the following command line parameter when the driver is first loaded each session: AUDAPTER /!C1 /!R0 The 'R' stands for refresh and the 0 disables the feature. If your synthesizer issues a slight pause about every ten keystrokes, you might want to give this command a try. When you have typed in the name of your driver followed by whichever switches are appropriate--don't forget to press ENTER after typing in the complete command-- a message should be printed to the screen and also spoken through your synthesizer. The message contains the name of the synthesizer and the version number of the device driver. If you do not wish to hear this message, add a ; (semicolon) to the end of the command line parameter. This signals the driver not to speak the initial message. For example: ECHOPC /!C1/!B4/!E5/!R0/EBADWORDS; This will load the device driver for the external echo synthesizer using COM1 at 4800 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit and no parity. The exception dictionary buffer is increased to 4 1/2K and the exception dictionary BADWORD.DIC is loaded. Finally the refresh command has been disabled. The welcome message will be printed to the screen but will not be spoken since the command line ended with the ;. PSSB /!L1 This will load the device driver for the Personal Speech System version B synthesizer using LPT1. Since this is being used on a parallel synthesizer, there is no need to specify the baud, data bits, stop bits or parity. The initial message will be printed to the screen and spoken. PROSE4 This simply starts up the driver for the Prose 4000 synthesizer. This is a synthesizer which does not require a port assignment. Now that you understand all of the commands available for each of the synthesizer drivers, lets talk specifically about each of the drivers in turn. ACCENT.COM As we said, this should be used if you plan on using any of the ACCENT synthesizers. The accent boards support all ten rates, pitch values and volumes but it does not support all 26 possible tone settings. They only support 10 possible tones. Therefore, Vocal-Eyes tones A-D are mapped into the accents tone 0. Vocal-Eyes tones E-L are mapped into the accent's tones 1-8 respectively. Finally Vocal-Eyes tones M-Z are mapped into the accent tone 9. This means all tones between M and Z will sound the same. The same is true for tones A-D. All other features work as expected. Before, you can use the internal accent, you have to load their device driver. Please refer to your accent user's manual for a complete description of this process. All necessary accent files should be loaded before you attempt to load the ACCENT.COM driver. By default, the internal Accent synthesizer intercepts LPT3. This means you should supply /!L3 on the ACCENT command line. APOLLO.COM This driver will work with the external Apollo synthesizers. The synthesizer itself does not require any setup. Simply execute the APOLLO driver. The Apollo supports the 10 rate levels and 10 pitch settings but does not support the volume or tone settings. The Apollo synthesizers do not support any handshaking. This means when the 8K buffer in the synthesizer fills, any new data will be lost. It is suggested that you not try and send more than 8,000 characters to the synthesizer at one time. With true handshaking, the synthesizer will signal to the computer that its internal buffer is full so stop sending data. As the synthesizer speaks, the buffer slowly empties. When there is enough room for more data, the synthesizer will tell the computer to start sending data again. Without this ability, the computer has no idea when the synthesizer buffer is full. Again, this will only be a problem if you send more than 8K of data to the synthesizer at once. ARTIC.COM This is to be used for all ARTIC synthesizers which support the SONIX.COM and TTS.COM. Newer ARTIC cards combine these two programs into one. Every card produced by ARTIC is capable of being used by Vocal-Eyes. However, you may have to purchase their interface which allows non-Artic products to function with it. Also, the Votalker board from Votrax should use this driver. You will recall, the Votalker also uses SONIX.COM and TTS.COM. Before you can load the ARTIC.COM driver, you must first load the above two programs. Assuming you do not require any command line parameters the following can be typed from the DOS prompt: SONIX TTS If you try and load the ARTIC.COM driver before loading the above two files, the driver will print "SONIX not loaded!" Simply load SONIX and TTS and reload ARTIC.COM. Those of you familiar with PORTTALK.COM will be happy to know it is not required with Vocal-Eyes. This driver will support all of Vocal-Eyes' features. This driver does not require you to specify a speech port. AUDAPTER.COM This driver is to be used with the Audapter synthesizer. The Audapter supports all 10 rate, pitch and volumes commands as well as all 26 tone settings. BNSPEAK.COM This driver is to be used with the Braille 'n Speak from Blazie Engineering. We do not recommend using the Braille 'n Speak in place of a true voice synthesizer. However, it works great for temporary installations. It does not support any of the 10 rates, pitch settings, volumes or tone settings directly from Vocal-Eyes. It does support the silence command but does not respond very quickly to it. In order for the Braille 'n Speak to be used as an external synthesizer, you first must enable the serial port and then place it into what is called "Speech box mode." The following can be used to enable the Braille 'n Speak: First perform a warm reset to assure the default settings: Dots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-chord Dots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-chord Next enable the speech port: P-chord Dots 2, 6 Y Next enable the Speech Box Mode Dots 3, 4, 5-chord Dots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 E-chord At this point, you can load the BNSPEAK.COM driver. If you wish to adjust the rate, pitch or volume you must issue the proper commands directly on the Braille 'n Speak keyboard. The Braille 'n Speak does not offer the ability for Vocal-Eyes to handle these features directly. The following is what is required to adjust these three settings: Dots 3, 4, 5-chord At this point, the following keys adjust the following features: Dot 1 Softer, Dot 4 Louder; (volume) Dot 2 Slower, Dot 5 Faster; (rate) Dot 3 Lower, Dot 6 Higher; (pitch) Once you have the desired settings, you must press: E-chord Now the Braille 'n Speak will use your new settings. If you have any further questions relating to the Braille 'n Speak, please refer to your Users Guide. DECTALK.COM This will allow you to use the well known DECtalk voice synthesizer. This synthesizer probably has the most pleasing voice quality but is by no means a very responsive synthesizer. It also costs much more the all the others. However, Vocal-Eyes uses it to its full potential. We are sure you will be pleased with the results. Since the DECtalk is a completely self-contained external synthesizer, you don't have to load any additional software other than the DECTALK.COM driver. It supports all ten rates and pitch settings but does not support any of the volume settings. Changing the volume from within Vocal-Eyes will have no effect at all. To adjust the volume, you must use the volume control on the DECtalk itself. Also, we decided to map in the 7 different voices the DECtalk offers into the tone settings. Therefore, Vocal-Eyes tones A-H will use Huge Harry. Tone I will use Perfect Paul. Tone J will use Frail Frank. Tone K will use Rough Rita. Tone L will use Beautiful Betty. Finally tones M-Z will use Kit the Kid. Also notice when Vocal-Eyes increases the pitch, it increases the pitch for the current voice. Some screen readers will switch you to a different voice. We feel increasing the Pitch is a more subtle way of accomplishing the same task. The DECtalk is probably the most complicated speech synthesizer available. Because of this, it seems to respond somewhat slower than other synthesizers. For example, you may silence the speech but the DECtalk may keep talking for a few seconds before it decides to stop speaking. Rest assured, Vocal-Eyes told the DECtalk to stop speaking the moment you requested it to. DBLTALK.COM This is used for the internal DoubleTalk PC synthesizer. The DoubleTalk supports all ten speech rates, pitch and volume settings. However, it only supports 2 tone settings. Vocal-Eyes tones A-M are mapped into the first tone setting and Vocal-Eyes tones N-Z are mapped into the second. You will notice using a rate of 9 will cause the DoubleTalk PC to talk much faster but use a much higher pitch. This is sort of a hyper-rate. If you do not feel comfortable with this rate, feel free to slow it down to a standard rate. This is only true for rate 9. No other software is needed to setup the DoubleTalk PC. Simply execute the DBLTALK driver. If the driver could not find the DoubleTalk PC, you will get an error message. Because the driver is capable of locating the DoubleTalk PC, no speech port is required. ECHOPC.COM Although this is called ECHOPC.COM it can be used with the Echo GP as well. This synthesizer like the DECtalk is a completely self-contained external synthesizer, you don't have to load any additional software other then the ECHOPC.COM driver. The Echos support all ten pitch settings and volume settings. However, it only offers two speech rates. Therefore, Vocal-Eyes speech rates of 0-4 will issue the slower of the two speeds and rates 5-9 will issue the faster of the two. Also, the Echos do not support any of the tone settings at all. Changing the tone value in Vocal-Eyes will have no effect at all on the speech. Unlike the DECtalk, the external Echos will stop speaking immediately when requested to. However, they have a side effect of squeaking or hiccuping. This can get annoying if you are using interruptability. You may wish to turn interruptability off when working with Echo. INAPOLLO.COM This driver will work with the internal Apollo synthesizers. The synthesizer itself does not require any setup. Simply execute the INAPOLLO driver. The Apollo supports the 10 rate levels and 10 pitch settings but does not support the volume or tone settings. This driver will work for the default settings of the standard desktop internal. However, you can adjust the port address on this board. Also, the Toshiba model has a different address still. Therefore, you may have to include the following command line parameter to specify the correct speech base address. /!Bx x=0-2 (0=308HEX, 1=318HEX, 2=Toshiba model) By default, Vocal-Eyes will assume you are using the desktop with the standard address of 308HEX. If you have changed the address to 318H, you must supply: INAPOLLO /!B1 Or if you are using the internal Toshiba version, you must supply: INAPOLLO /!B2 The Apollo synthesizers do not support any handshaking. This means when the 8K buffer in the synthesizer fills, any new data will be lost. It is suggested that you not try and send more than 8,000 characters to the synthesizer at one time. With true handshaking, the synthesizer will signal to the computer that its internal buffer is full so stop sending data. As the synthesizer speaks, the buffer slowly empties. When there is enough room for more data, the synthesizer will tell the computer to start sending data again. Without this ability, the computer has no idea when the synthesizer buffer is full. Again, this will only be a problem if you send more than 8K of data to the synthesizer at once. You do not have to specify a speech port. INTECHO.COM This driver will work with either the Echo PC+, MC or 1000. All three of these are treated the same. The only difference is the machines they work on. In order to use these synthesizers, you need to load the program TALK.EXE. This is supplied with your synthesizer. Please refer to your synthesizer manual if you have any questions on how to load this program. If you try and load the INTECHO.COM driver prior to loading the TALK.EXE program, the driver will print "The ECHO software was not found." Simply load TALK.EXE and reload INTECHO.COM. One of the options the TALK program offers is what key do you wish to silence the speech with. Do not assign a key for this feature. Allow Vocal-Eyes to handle this. These synthesizers support all ten rates, pitch settings and volume levels. However, it does not support any of the tone settings. Vocal-Eyes' tone options will have no effect at all. These synthesizers require the complete attention of the machine while it is speaking text. Therefore, You may notice some sluggishness while using any of these synthesizers. These synthesizer do not require a port assignment. Vocal-Eyes will automatically find the synthesizer. PDECTALK.COM This will allow you to use the Portable DECtalk voice synthesizer. This synthesizer uses the same voice as the original DECtalk and has the same characteristics. Since the Portable DECtalk is a completely self-contained external synthesizer, you don't have to load any additional software other than the PDECTALK.COM driver. It supports all ten rates and pitch settings but does not support any of the volume settings. Changing the volume from within Vocal-Eyes will have no effect at all. Also, we decided to map in the 7 different voices the DECtalk offers into the tone settings. Therefore, Vocal-Eyes tones A-H will use Huge Harry. Tone I will use Perfect Paul. Tone J will use Frail Frank. Tone K will use Rough Rita. Tone L will use Beautiful Betty. Finally tones M-Z will use Kit the Kid. Also notice when Vocal-Eyes increases the pitch, it increases the pitch for the current voice. Some screen readers will switch you to a different voice. We feel increasing the Pitch is a more subtle way of accomplishing the same task. The Portable DECtalk is slightly different than the original DECtalk. First, it is capable of speaking at a much faster rate. You will notice rate 9 for the original DECtalk does not speak nearly as fast as the Portable DECtalk rate 9. The other difference is a flaw in the Portable DECtalk itself. It has a feature which will automatically powerdown the DECtalk if no character has been received through the serial port within a configurable time. This is to conserve battery power. Once a character is received, it was suppose to power up and continue on normally. However, if the Portable DECtalk is in the process of speaking something but nothing has been sent to it through the serial port for some time, it would shut down and not finish speaking the remainder of the text. The PDECTALK driver will disable this feature when it is first loaded. However, if you power down the Dec and power it back up again, the auto-powerdown feature may be re-enabled. Therefore, you should never power down the Portable DECtalk unless you are finished with it. The DECtalk is probably the most complicated speech synthesizer available. Because of this, it seems to respond somewhat slower than other synthesizers. For example, you may silence the speech but the DECtalk may keep talking for a few seconds before it decides to stop speaking. Rest assured, Vocal-Eyes told the DECtalk to stop speaking the moment you requested it to. PROSE4.COM This should be used if you wish to use Vocal-Eyes with the PROSE-4000 synthesizer. Even though this is an internal synthesizer, nothing else is required to be loaded. The PROSE4.COM contains all necessary information. If you have the PROSE.COM utility, you should not use it. This would interfere with PROSE4.COM. All ten rates, pitch settings and volume levels are supported. However, the PROSE does not support the tone settings. Therefore, changing Vocal-Eyes' tone settings will have no effect at all. Like the DECtalk, if you silence the speech it may take a moment to silence the speech. Rest assured Vocal-Eyes sent the proper commands to the PROSE. Sometimes, it takes it a moment or so to actually silence the speech however. A speech port assignment is not required for this synthesizer. However, if you have changed the onboard IRQ from the default of 2 or have changed the speech port address from the default of 300 HEX, you must supply a command to the driver indicating the change. /!Ix - x = 2-7. This parameter will supply to the PROSE4 driver which IRQ the Prose 4000 has been setup for. By default the driver will assume IRQ 2. This is the default for the Prose 4000 board. If you have changed the IRQ from 2, you must supply this parameter. For example, if the IRQ has been changed to 7, you must supply: PROSE4 /!I7 /!Bx - x = 0-4. (0=300HEX, 1=308HEX, 2=310HEX, 3=318HEX, 4=320HEX) This parameter will supply to the PROSE4 driver the speech base address. By default the driver will assume 300 HEX. This is the default for the Prose 4000 board. If you have changed the base address from 300 HEX, you must supply this parameter. For example, if the speech address has been changed to 318 HEX, you must supply: PROSE4 /!B3 If necessary, you can combine both the IRQ command and the speech base address. This driver does not require a port address. PSSA.COM This is a self contained external synthesizer so nothing other then PSSA.COM needs to be loaded. This should be used for the Personal Speech System version A only. This is a relatively old synthesizer. It really was not designed for the blind community. You will notice as you speed the voice up, the voice becomes very choppy and difficult to understand. It supports all ten rates, pitch settings and volume levels. However, it does not support any tone settings. Changing Vocal-Eyes' tone option will have no effect whatsoever. PSSB.COM This is just like the PSSA.COM except it is for Personal Speech System version B. It has the same features and limitations as version A. VEASP.COM This driver is to be used with the ASP synthesizer. It supports all of the Vocal-Eyes commands. GENERIC.COM This can be used if the synthesizer you are using is not directly supported with its own driver. You will need to setup your synthesizer as required in its users manual. Once all its required software is loaded, simply load the GENERIC.COM driver. At this point, you should be able to use your synthesizer with Vocal-Eyes. However, you will not have any control over the rate, pitch, volume, tone and worst of all, you will not be able to silence the voice from Vocal-Eyes. If your synthesizer supports any of these features, you can tell the generic driver how to use it. When you first load GENERIC.COM, it looks for a file called "GENERIC.DAT." If this file does not exist, it will default to not supporting any features at all. However, if it does exist, the information will be used giving Vocal-Eyes control it normally would not have. The format of the GENERIC.DAT file is very important. There is not much room for error. First of all, the file must be in a standard ASCII format. It must contain exactly 59 lines. The first 10 lines relate to the 10 rate commands, followed by the 10 pitches, 10 volumes, 26 tones, silence string, initialization string and finally a list of punctuation characters that can be sent to the synthesizer. This all adds up to 59 lines. Even if your synthesizer does not support all features, you must make an entry for all 59 lines. If there is a problem in the format of the file, the GENERIC driver will print "Format error in GENERIC.DAT" and abort the load process. You should correct the problem and attempt to load the driver again. In the following example, we will create a GENERIC.DAT driver for the Sounding Board. Of course, this is not needed for the Sounding Board but it will make a good demonstration. The first 10 lines of the file relate to rates 0 through 9. Each rate command must be on a line by itself. First you need to figure out what command your synthesizer needs for the 10 rates. The Sounding Board uses CTRL-ER0-9. Therefore, the first 10 lines of your file would look like this: /5/R0 /5/R1 /5/R2 /5/R3 /5/R4 /5/R5 /5/R6 /5/R7 /5/R8 /5/R9 You are probably wondering what the /5/ is used for at the beginning of each line. Many word processors or text editors will not let you place ESCAPE or control characters directly in a file. Therefore, whenever you wish to enter one of these codes, use the format: /n/ Where n is the ASCII value of the character you wish entered. For example, to enter an 'ESCAPE Control-Z A' as one of your entries, the following line could be used: /27//26/A The /27/ is the ASCII value of the ESCAPE. /26/ is the ASCII value of Control-Z and of course the A can be enter directly. What if you really wanted to enter a '/' in your string? Simply place two slashes together. For example: /5////6/B This line would place a Control-E (/5/) followed by a / (//) followed by a Control-F (/6/) and finally a B (B). Therefore in our Sounding Board example, the /5/ is simply the required Control-E character. Now that we have defined the first 10 lines as the rate, the next 10 lines need to define pitches 0-9. The Sounding Board requires CTRL-EP0-9. Therefore, the following would be lines 11-20. /5/P0 /5/P1 /5/P2 /5/P3 /5/P4 /5/P5 /5/P6 /5/P7 /5/P8 /5/P9 Now, we need to define the 10 possible volumes 0-9. The Sounding Board requires CTRL-EV0-9. Therefore, the following would be lines 21-30: /5/V0 /5/V1 /5/V2 /5/V3 /5/V4 /5/V5 /5/V6 /5/V7 /5/V8 /5/V9 The next 26 lines need to define the 26 possible tones A-Z. The Sounding Board requires CTRL-EA-Z. Therefore, the following would be lines 31-56: /5/TA /5/TB /5/TC . . . /5/TX /5/TY /5/TZ The next line in the GENERIC.DAT file should be the string which when sent to the synthesizer will silence the speech. On the Sounding Board this is CTRL-X. Therefore, the following would be line 57 in our GENERIC.DAT file. /24/ Remember, /24/ simply means ASCII 24 which is a CTRL-X. The next line contains the initialization string. This string will only be sent to your synthesizer one time. You can use this feature to make sure certain settings are always set the way they should be. The Sounding Board really does not require such a string. Therefore, leave this line completely blank. Line 58 in our GENERIC.DAT file will simply be a blank line. The final line holds all the punctuation characters which can be sent to the synthesizer. On the Sounding Board this is every character. However, for example, the Personal Speech System uses both the ! (exclamation point) and the @ (at sign) for command strings. If you send these characters, the synthesizer will give an error. So for the final line 59, you would type the following if you are using the Personal Speech System: ~`()_^-{}|:[]"?\;,.' Notice the leading space. Make sure you include this character. You should try and send as many punctuation characters as possible so your synthesizer can use them for intonation. Notice the @ and ! have been left out. There are a few others which have been left out since they also can be used as command characters. Sounding Board users could have included each and every punctuation character. Now that you have all 59 lines typed in your file, save the file in a standard ASCII format. Assuming you have no errors, each time you load GENERIC.COM, it will load the GENERIC.DAT file and use the information specified. It may take a bit to get this file setup but once it is done, you no longer have to worry about it but your synthesizer will work forever.