DECtalk PC V4.2B Release Notes.        01/26/95


ENHANCEMENTS.

DECtalk PC V4.2B includes enhancements in the following
areas.

     A. "Cleaner" installations.
     B. Expanded User information.
     C. Expanded DTDEMO program.
     D. Expanded Pronunciation rules.
     E. Homograph processing.
     F. Naturalness and intelligibility.
     G. Digitized sound file processing.
     H. Expanded dictionary.
     I. User dictionary enhancements.
     J. Multi-lingual architecture.
     K. Improved indexing.
     L. Parameter setup and recall commands.


UPGRADERS.

NOTE: Prior to installing this Software the DECtalk command
lines must be removed from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The lines are
usually at the end of the file and look like this:

	CD \DECtalk
	DT_DRIV -r >nul
	DT_CONF
	DT_DRIV -c 
	DT_LOAD Kernel.sys cmd.exe ph.exe lts.exe dtpc.exe
	DT_start


     The DECtalk Install program now will add another line
into the DT.BAT file. The line is: DT_LOAD USA.EXE.
This is to accommodate the new multilingual architecture.
This particular command loads the file with the code page,
typing table and translation table for American English.
Additional files will be used for other languages.

     The startup of DECtalk will now be less "verbose" with
its screen output messages. Error trapping will now cause
DECtalk to exit out of its startup command sequence if a
problem is detected. This should help diagnosing
installation problems. In fact, it should help eliminate
trouble calls when there isn't a problem, but just confusion
caused by the seemingly conflicting screen output messages.

UPGRADE.

     If you are upgrading the DECtalk PC software from a
previous version, please review the upgrade instructions in
the file UPGRADE.TXT.

DECtalk PC (DTC07-AA) Plug and Play Configuration File

The Install disk for the DECtalk PC includes a configuration file named
!dtc07aa.cfg which can be used with the ISA Configuration Utility (ICU) 
that is now shipping with many new PCs.  To find more about Plug and Play,
please read PLUGPLAY.TXT.

USER INFORMATION.

The documentation has been expanded to
provide more information to the user with regards to using
the DECtalk PC with DOS commands, using files created with
word processors, playing digitized sound files, embedding
commands in text files and using headphones.


DTDEMO.       

The DTDEMO demo program has been expanded to provide the 
capability to select the different voices and to play a 
digitized sound file.  The volume up and volume down 
commands have been changed to go up or down 5 steps 
instead of one to make the volume change more noticeable.


INDEXING.

In version 4.1 reporting of index mark's was not accurate 
when indexing was done on a word by word basis. The indexing 
algorithm has have been improved so that you can now tell 
exactly where the DECtalk speech output is at any point in 
time. In fact indexes are now accurate to the phoneme level.

       Indexes are markers that an application places in the
input text stream which get reported when the marker reaches
the last stage of the synthesizer. This enables you to
determine exactly if and when a particular part of speech
has in fact been spoken.


IMPROVED PRONOUNCIATION.

       Much effort has been expended to significantly
improve DECtalks pronunciation of irregular text. DECtalk
used to frequently default to spelling file names etc.
DECtalk will now very rarely resort to spelling. For example
it now would handle "747max.doc" by saying "seven hundred
forty seven max dot doc". It also recognizes telephone
numbers and speaks them differently than regular numbers,
like people do.

     The number of changes are too numerous to explain all
of them in this document. Try letting DECtalk speak some
difficult text including file names, hyphenated words or
words separated with slashes.

       In addition DECtalk's ability to differentiate
homographs has been greatly improved. Homographs are when
two different words are spelled the same but pronounced
differently. For example, "He will lead it. " cannot be
pronounced correctly unless you know whether the subject is
a stained glass window or a trip. DECtalk can also say, " He
will wind the clock on a windy day." and get it correct.

       Many other detailed speech improvements have been
added to improve DECtalks naturalness and intelligibility.
For example "riding" and "writing" produce the same speech
sounds in English and in the past they both sounded the same
with DECtalk. Now you can tell one from the other.
Improvements have been made in all areas of the synthesizer;
additions to the dictionary, improvements to the duration
rules, improvements to the acoustic-phonetics and other
areas.


DIGITIZED SPEECH.

     DECtalk can now play digitized 8 bit mono sound files
in the Sound Blaster VOC format. Recording rates of 4KHz to
22khz are supported. The playing of these files is
demonstrated in the dtdemo program. A new program PLAY.EXE
for playing sound files is documented in the User Guide.


USER DICTIONARY ENHANCEMENTS.

	The previous user dictionary compiler command has been replaced by
USER_DIC.BAT.  This command alphabetizes the user dictionary list and 
compiles the new loadable user dictionary.
	The user dictionary now supports suffix stipping.  Only the root
word (eg. socket) needs to be entered into the user dictionary list, 
but all its variations (eg. socketed, sockets, socketing) will be recognized.	


NOTES FOR DEVELOPERS.

MULTI-LANGUAGE ARCHITECTURE.

     This version of DECtalk has incorporated the
architecture for multi-lingual capability. The first
indication of this will be the addition of another file
name, USA.EXE, in the DT_LOAD command line.

     Each language, when supported, will have basically
three components. They are: 1. letter-to-sound, 2. phonemic
and 3. interface. For American English, these three
components are LTS.EXE, PH.EXE and USA.EXE. Other languages
will have their own LTS, PH and Lang EXE files. The
architecture allows at least two languages to be loaded
simultaneously on the board by just adding the appropriate
file names to the DT_LOAD command line. Switching between
the languages will be done with a simple in-line text
command. The syntax of the new command is [:lang LANG] where
LANG represents the language to be used on all the text
following the command.


TYPING TABLE.

The typing table was changed to more closely reflect the
actual names of keyboard keys. For example the entry in the
table for the Enter key is now "Enter" and not "Carriage
Return".


PARAMETER SETUP/RECALL COMMANDS.

     Two new inline text commands have been added which
allow strings of DECtalk voice control commands to be loaded
onto the board and then be recalled with a simple "set
variables" command. Up to ten (10) strings of 64 characters
each can be loaded and recalled.


FAST PCs.

     On fast PC processors (486's), if a large amount of
text is being sent to the DECtalk at once, it can occupy the
DECtalk so long in the communications task that the speech
buffer runs dry, causing the speech to stop and/or
"stutter".

     Please contact us if you encounter this problem. In
many cases the application developer may have incorporated a
special case for fast PC processors. In the interim, try
sending smaller pieces of text to the DECtalk e.g.,
paragraphs  instead of pages, etc.



APPENDIX A.

LIST OF FILES.

     Files on the Distribution Disk:

DDB.001,             Compressed "DECtalk" files.
Disk.ID,             ID of the disk.
INSTALL.DAT,         Data relating to the compressed files.
INSTALL.EXE,         Installation program.
PLUGPLAY.TXT,	     Plug and Play text file.
README.TXT,          V4.2B Release Notes.
UGUIDE.TXT,          ASCII text file of the Install/User.
                     Guide.
UPGRADE.TXT,         Upgrade instructions.
!DTC07AA.CFG,	     Plug and Play configuration file.

Files Installed in DECtalk subdirectory:

ALPHABET.EXE,        User dictionary alphabetizer.
CMD.EXE,             DECtalk command processor.
COMMAND.TXT,         DECtalk command reference text file.
DEC.VOC,             Sample Digitized sound file.
DT.BAT,              DECtalk load batch file.
DTDEMO.C,            DTDEMO source program file.
DTDEMO.EXE,          DECtalk demo program.
DTDEMP.H,            DTDEMO header file function.
                     prototypes.
DTPC.DIC,            DECtalk builtin dictionary.
DTTSR.H,             DTDEMO tsr command definition header.
                     file.
DT_CONF.EXE,         DECtalk initialization and
                     configuration utility.
DT_DRIV.EXE,         DECtalk MS-DOS terminate and stay.
                     resident driver. 
DT_LOAD.EXE,         DECtalk module program loader.
DT_START.EXE,        Startup message program.
KERNEL.SYS,          DECtalk microprocessor kernel.
LTS.EXE,             DECtalk letter-to-sound module.
PH.EXE,              DECtalk phoneme module.
PLAY.EXE,            Play digitized .VOC sound file
                     command.
PLUGPLAY.TXT,	     Plug and Play text file.
README.TXT,          V4.2B Release notes.
SPD.TXT,	     Software Product Description.
UDICT.EXE,           User dictionary compiler.
UPGRADE.TXT,         V4.2A Upgrade text file.
USA.EXE,             American-English environment module.
USER_DIC.BAT,        User dictionary .BAT file, calls
		     UDIC.EXE and ALPHABET.EXE.




























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