Developing an Electronic Mail-Reading Application

DECtalk Software supplies an e-mail parser for Windows and for Tru64 UNIX (not for MS DOS). See the email option of the Mode command for additional information.

If you wish to write your own electronic mail preprocessor, you can implement the following text conversions before sending the text to DECtalk Software:

Parse the header boilerplate to remove extraneous information.

Add the new paragraph symbol [+] to each blank line between paragraphs if DECtalk Software is speaking paragraphs of text.

Click here to see the complete list of syntactic symbols.

Create your own application-specific, user dictionary, for words that have an application specific pronunciation.

If DECtalk Software is connected to a database containing names, consider one of the following options:

Add the Pronounce command before the database word to force the language specific rules on the name. For example:

[:pronounce name] name

Replace the database word with its phoneme text. You must use the Phoneme Interpretation command to turn on phoneme interpretation

Scan the text for strings of numbers in a format understandable to your application but not to DECtalk Software. For example, if you can extract the time format from an electronic mail message, you can add code to your application to expand it to its “o’clock” form.

In many applications, the listener might want to write down number strings (such as prices or telephone numbers). Your application can scan the text for strings of numbers and, when found, send them to DECtalk Software in a way that includes pauses at critical locations.

Click here for a complete list of phoneme symbols, including the silent underscore ( _ ) symbol.

Click here to see the Tone Table help for the syntax to add duration and pitch to phoneme text.

Example

When spelling an item, your application might need to distinguish the case of letters. Consider using different voices to distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. For example:

[:nf]Maynard [:nf]M[:nb]a y n a r d [:nf]Maynard.