IAgentCharacter::Speak

HRESULT Speak(
   BSTR bszText,    // text to speak
   BSTR bszURL,     // URL of a file to speak
   long * pdwReqID  // address of a request ID
);

Speaks the text or sound file.

• Returns S_OK to indicate the operation was successful.

bszText

The text the character is to speak.

bszURL

The URL (or file specification) of a sound file to use for spoken output. This can be a standard sound file (.WAV) or linguistically enhanced sound file (.LWV).

pdwReqID

Address of a variable that receives the Speak request ID.

To use this method with a character configured to speak using a text-to-speech (TTS) engine; simply provide the bszText parameter. You can include vertical bar characters (|) in the bszText parameter to designate alternative strings, so that each time the server processes the method, it randomly choose a different string. Support of TTS output is defined when the character is compiled using the Microsoft Agent Character Editor.

If you want to use sound file output for the character, specify the location for the file in the bszURL parameter. When using the HTTP protocol to download a sound file, use the Prepare method to ensure the availability of the file before using this method. You can use the bszText parameter to specify the words that appear in the character's word balloon. If you specify a linguistically enhanced sound file (.LWV) for the bszURL parameter and do not specify text, the bszText parameter uses the text stored in the file.

The Speak method uses the last animation played to determine which speaking animation to play. For example, if you precede the Speak command with a IAgentCharacter::Play "GestureRight", the server will play GestureRight and then the GestureRight speaking animation. If the last animation played has no speaking animation, then Microsoft Agent plays the animation assigned to the character's Speaking state.

If you call Speak and the audio channel is busy, the character's audio output will not be heard, but the text will display in the word balloon. The word balloon's Enabled property must also be True for the text to display.

Microsoft Agent's automatic word breaking in the word balloon, breaks words using white-space characters (for example, space and tab). However, it may break a word to fit the balloon as well. In languages like Japanese, Chinese, and Thai, where spaces are not used to break words, insert a Unicode zero width space character (0x200B) between characters to define logical word breaks.

Note  Set the character's language ID (using IAgentCharacterEx::SetLanguageID before using the Speak method to ensure appropriate text display within the word balloon.

See Also

IAgentCharacter::Play, IAgentBalloon::GetEnabled, IAgentCharacter::Prepare