Drax said:
I would like to now how to turn it on and how to use it.
In Windows XP..
Start button --> Help and Support
Search for:
Text to Speech
The results include (among many..):
Text to speech overview
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Text-to-speech (TTS) is the ability of the operating system to play back
printed text as spoken words. An internal driver, called a TTS engine,
recognizes the text and using a synthesized voice chosen from several
pre-generated voices, speaks the written text. A TTS engine is installed
with the operating system. Additional engines are also available through
third party manufacturers. These engines often use a certain jargon or
vocabulary; for example, a vocabulary specializing in medical or legal
terminology. They can also use different voices allowing for regional
accents such as British English, or speak a different language altogether
such as German, French or Russian. For more information on third parties who
provide additional SAPI 5-compatible components, please visit our Third
Party Products page.
The Text-to-Speech tab on Speech properties in Control Panel presents the
options for each TTS engine. See the individual Help topics for specific
help. In addition to the general options, each engine can have a different
set of specific features. For that reason, not all the resulting dialog
boxes will look the same. It is possible that no special features have been
included and some of the properties buttons will not have an associated
dialog box.
To preview the text-to-speech voice
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- Open Speech in Control Panel.
- On the Text-to-Speech tab, the displayed name in the Voice selection
drop-down list box is the active voice.
- Click Preview Voice to hear the currently selected voice; the text will be
spoken, highlighting the words as they are spoken. During playback, Preview
Voice will change to Stop. Click Stop to interrupt the voice playback.
** Notes
- You can change the text to be read by the Preview Voice by highlighting
the text and typing in new text. These changes are not permanent and when
you reopen Speech properties or select a different voice, the text will
reset to the default.
- To open a Control Panel item, click Start, point to Settings, click
Control Panel, and then double-click the appropriate icon.
