Vox Proxy Version 2
Han Yan · Information Technology and Libraries · 2004
Right Seat Software, Inc., 1110 12th Street, Unit A Golden, CO 80401 Tel: (303) 278-2244 Fax: (303) 278-6967 Email: [email protected] www.voxproxy.com Price: Vox Proxy Version 2 $199, Vox Proxy Version 2 with CD Prep $228.95. Educational pricing available. Upgrades from Version 1 to Version 2: $99; with CD Prep $109. AT&T Natural Voices text-to-speech (TTS) speech engine $60. Additional voices $25 each. An evaluation version is also available as a free download at www.voxproxy.com. System Requirements: Pentium II 300MHZ or faster, 64MB RAM (128MB recommended), 150MB hard drive (500MB more for AT&T engine), 800x600 resolution or higher, a microphone if using VP speech recognition, Windows 95/ 98/Me/NT/2000/XP, PowerPoint 2000, or newer. Functionality and Technologies Anyone who is looking to create a more dynamic PowerPoint presentation may find Vox Proxy meeting his or her needs. The Vox Proxy version 2 is an add-on scripting software package for Microsoft PowerPoint that allows users to have 3-D animated characters that can talk in their presentations. Based on Microsoft's ActiveX and Agent technology, Vox Proxy runs on PowerPoint 2000, 2002, and 2003 under a Windows environment, but not on Mac and Unix/Linux. The Vox Proxy with CD Prep package consists of Vox Proxy, the Vox Proxy Player, and the CD Prep. The Vox Proxy Player is a free program that plays the Vox Proxy PowerPoint presentations for users who do not have Vox Proxy itself. It is similar in concept to the Adobe Reader for those who do not have Adobe Acrobat, while CD Prep is a utility program that prepares self-starting CDs containing the Vox Proxy Player and presentations. The self-starting CDs can even be played on PowerPoint 97. Vox Proxy comes with TruVoice text-to-speech (TTS) engines in ten languages. The extra-cost AT&T Natural Voices TTS engine is available with a male or a female voice in different languages and accents including United States English, British English, French, Spanish, and German. Microsoft Agent technology is a set of software services that supports various agents (characters) with interactive personalities under a Windows environment. Vox Proxy contains twenty-five additional characters along with the four original included with Windows. Each character comes with a list of animations that it can perform. Paul, for example, can perform more than 100 different animations such as jump, read, and move. Characters can speak text using a TTS engine that users write for them. The default TTS engine is TruVoice, which is supplied by Microsoft, but the AT&T engine delivers more human-sounding computer speech than the default one. Special tags are also available to customize the intonation of the speech, including emphasis, whisper, monotone, pitch, and speed. Special features are also provided to improve the quality of the speech. For example, a pronunciation dictionary is provided to allow users to control the pronunciations for unusual or foreign words, and speech balloons display the speech on the screen at the same time it is spoken. To create the Vox Proxy PowerPoint presentations, one must use the Vox Proxy script writer. The Vox Proxy script language is different from scripting languages such as VBScript (Visual Basic) or Perl, since it is more natural-language oriented and thus much simpler for the general user. A Vox-Proxy script is simply a text document containing a list of predefined commands, which control the behaviors of characters, manage PowerPoint control commands such as change slides, and perform other actions such as play multimedia files. Interface The installation follows the general Windows applications installation process and by default will create the directory Vox Proxy under the Program Files directory. The product is embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint and is displayed as a pull-down menu named Vox Proxy next to Slide Show (figure 1). …