Ensign: Text-to-speech Speakonia

Speakonia is a free text-to-speech program that will automatically say any text that is copied to the Windows clipboard.  A computerized voice can be heard through the computer speakers, reading the text.   Download Speakonia (free) from this web site:  http://www.cfs-technologies.com/home/?id=1.4.

Speakonia is a great companion program for the Ensign Windows chat room or with EChat2.   The Ensign chat room has a Read checkbox that when checked will copy the arriving transcript text to the clipboard.  Thus, by running Speakonia and checking the Read checkbox in the chat room, the transcript will be spoken.

In Speakonia, click the menu Tools.  Check the Enable Clipboard Reading menu.   When selected, the Enable Clipboard Reading menu will show a depressed square to the left.

Speakonia can also be used for more purposes than just reading the chat room transcript.   Ensign Windows has a command in its ESPL language named  'Clipboard' .  This command allows the ESPL language to copy text to the clipboard.  When combined with the speech program, some interesting possibilities were opened up.  ESPL can now be used to copy changing Prices from a chart to the clipboard.  This enables your computer to say the price as the symbol trades.  ESPL can also be used to copy the News Title to the clipboard.  This enables your computer to read the News Title Line to you, when a News Alert is triggered.  The following ESPL program (below) shows an example of both of these capabilities.  The syntax of the  'Clipboard'  command is also documented. 

In our opinion, the reading voice of Speakonia is excellent quality and easy to understand.  This great little program will read the content of the Windows Clipboard whenever the content changes.   Ensign Windows can use Speakonia to implement a talking quote machine with the following ESPL examples.   Another use would be to have Ensign Windows read News Titles when a News Alert is triggered. 

Clipboard
procedure Clipboard(Text :string);

Description

The Clipboard command is used to copy Text to the Windows clipboard.  The Text can then be pasted into another application or window.  Some customers use this feature to enable the computer to talk to them.  Use the Speakonia program to automatically say whatever is copied to the clipboard.  For example, news alert titles can be copied to the clipboard.  The computer would read and say the news title line.

Example:  The following example copies the price of a symbol to the clipboard.  Each time the price changes on a chart, the computer will say the price.  Click the 'Studies' button, and then click ESPL button 1 (who=51) to apply the study to the active chart.  The program below also allows news story title alerts to be read.  Click button 1 in the ESPL script editor window to activate the news reader.  Click button 2 to stop the news reader.  Set news alerts in Ensign Windows to trigger the title lines to be read.

Example 1:  Call out the current chart price.   Select button #1 on the Study panel to add the feature to a chart.
Example 2:  Read the News Title for titles that trigger a News alert on the News form.

procedure SayChartPrice;
var
  s: string;
  Price: integer;
begin
  SetUser(ePlot1,false);       // Nothing to plot
  SetUser(eName,'SayPrice');   // Name this study
  SetUser(eClose,false);       // Say every price
  Price:=Last(BarEnd);
  if (Price mod 100) = 0 then s:=IntToStr(Price div 100) else s:=IntToStr(Price mod 100);
  Clipboard(s);                // Speakonia will speak the string on the Clipboard
end;

{-- Main Program --}
begin
  if ESPL=1 then AlertEvent(eNews,69); // Enable  News Title Alert Event
  if ESPL=2 then AlertEvent(eNews,0);  // Disable News Title Alert Event
  if ESPL=51 then SayChartPrice;       // Call out the current chart price
  if ESPL=69 then Clipboard(IT);       // Speak the news title
end;