Part 4- Output tags

Part 4 - Speech Output Tags

Speech output tags can be used to modify the way in which words are spoken. All tags start and end with a backslash, and modify the word following the output tag. White-space is important so be sure not to leave empty space after your output tag or else your tag will not work properly.

One good example of this is the Emphasis ("Emp") tag. This tag will force the agent to emphasize a word. First lets hear a phrase without the emphasis placed on any word:

     Merlin.Speak "I will emphasize this word."

Now try it with the emphasis tag on the word "this".

     Merlin.Speak "I will emphasize \emp\this word."

Some tags like the Character ("Chr") tag have a parameter you can pass. This parameter must be surrounded by quotes, but since this is a string and the whole text is already in quotes you have to use double-quotes so VB knows that the quotes are part of the string. So to use the "Whisper" parameter for the "Chr" tag we would do this:

     Merlin.Speak "\Chr=""Whisper""\This is an example of whispering."

Another example of a tag that has parameters is the Context ("Ctx") tag. This tag can be used for Email addresses and phone numbers. To see why you may want to use the tag try this:

     Merlin.Speak me@someplace.com

Notice Merlin said "me at someplace com" instead of "me at someplace dot com". That is because the period is never normally spoken by the agent. To get the agent to speak the period for an Email address you need to use the "Ctx" tag. Try this:

     Merlin.Speak "\Ctx=""Address"\webmaster@abstractvb.com."