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Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Title:	AMIGA NOTES
Notice:	Join us in the NEW conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2
Moderator:	HYDRA::MOORE

Created:	Sat Apr 26 1986
Last Modified:	Wed Feb 05 1992
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	5378
Total number of notes:	38326

298.0. "SAY needs a breather!" by CURIUS::TOMLINSON () Tue Feb 03 1987 16:41

    Help! I am trying to get Narrator to speak in time to some
    music I've created (using tape dubbing, not channels).  How do
    you get Narrator to pause?  The music has long rests in between
    verses.  I've tried several things using SAY -X (ASCII file) in
    CLI and phonemes (lots of Q's) or SAY TRANSLATE$ in BASIC.
    
    In BASIC, I've tried creating a SAY TRANSLATE$ line for each
    verse and separating them with Sound statements with the approp.
    duration for the pause/rest and volume set to 0.  Depending on
    surrounding code, it either says all of the SAY lines and ignores
    the SOUND lines, or produces nothing.
    
    Once I wrote a program (UGH) alternating GOSUBs(to a SAY TRANSLATE$ line)
    with SOUND lines.  It worked once for the first two lines - with
    the proper pause, then gave me an error (Illeg. func. or something).
    I've also fiddled with WAIT and the aysnch/synchronous values in
    my speech array and with different channels for Sound and SAY output.
                                                                             
    Is this a problem because of the way speech is loaded and executed? or am
    I missing something?
    
    Thanks for any help/tips!
    
    Kristine Tomlinson

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
298.1	, , , , , , ,	AUTHOR::MACDONALD		`Tue Feb 03 1987 17:09`	1
	Use successive commas for pauses.
298.2	Periods, too.	TLE::RMEYERS	Randy Meyers	`Tue Feb 03 1987 18:39`	21
	Another important "point" (heh, heh) is that the narrator does not automatically supply a period at the end of a line of text. (The documentation says it does, but the documentation is wrong.) Try: SAY I am Amiga and then: SAY I am Amiga. the version with the period sounds much more natural because the narrator follows the rules for speaking the end of a sentence. I am not sure if you would want periods in all of the lines of a song or poem, but it probably is appropriate in spots. By the way, if you haven't seen it already, there is a fairly good discussion of the narrator as an appendix in the Basic manual. The appendix contains just about all of text in the Rom Kernel Manual on the narrator, except for parts dealing on C programming.
298.3	...	HYSTER::DEARBORN	Trouvez Mieux	`Tue Feb 03 1987 19:25`	2
	Multiple periods will give you "and so on." not a pause.
298.4	Thanks,,,	CURIUS::TOMLINSON		`Wed Feb 04 1987 15:58`	7
	Thank-you all. Can't remember trying multiple commas for pauses and will try it tonight. To R.Meyers, yes the BASIC appendix IS good and I was considering buying the ROM manual but wasn't sure how helpful it would be - glad to hear it's pretty similar. I've also found useful transportable hints from DECtalk references.
298.5	There's no stopping us now!	CURIUS::TOMLINSON		`Thu Feb 05 1987 16:28`	36
	Still had no luck with placing long pauses in sentences. Here's what I tried: I have two versions of the same text, one a straight text file, the other a BASIC program using phoneme strings. 1. Using the straight text file and CLI I added tons of commas at the end of my first "verse" -- no difference. 2. Next, I experimented with lots of commas followed by punctuation or words; still no difference. 3. In my BASIC program, I tried adding commas to my phoneme string and as an additional string -- didn't think this what was meant, but what the heck I'm now driven! e.g., A$ = "Phonemes ,,,," SAY (A$),speech_array% and, A$ = "phonemes" B$ = ",,,,,,," C$ = "more phonemes" SAY (A$+B$+C$),speech_array% Because using phonemes sounds so much better, I'd really like to find a programming solution that allows me to use them - like my original Sound (with volume set at zero) idea. It still seems like SAY and SAY TRANSLATE$ load up all at once and execute before any other types of commands regardless of their order. Killing the program doesn't even shut it up!! Any more ideas or clarification of previous suggestions? Thanks, Kristine and her computer now named "The Mouth!"
298.6	Have you tried these?	NAC::WALLACE		`Tue Feb 10 1987 12:12`	5
	With text strings try using multiple colons (:::::::), which will translate into periods separated by spaces (. . . . . ), producing a pause. With phoneme strings alternating Q's & dashes (Q-Q-Q-Q-Q) can generate reasonable delays.
298.7	I thank you,my computer thanks you!	CURIUS::TOMLINSON		`Wed Feb 11 1987 23:50`	12
	Re: .6 NAC::WALLACE Thanks! The Q-Q_Q's did the trick! (::::'s worked only in text files if imbedded, but not in BASIC strings). This project's a birthday present and I'm running out of time; so the solution's great. Most all of my time spent on my Amiga is with speech and sound synthesis; but there doesn't seem to be much available out there. Do you (or anybody else out there) have any tips or sources? (I only know BASIC so far)> Thanks again.