Happy Xmas 2012

[AdrianFox]

UPDATED 9th December 2012

Here is my Xmas offering for 2012. It is mostly in IWBasic but with GWS's falling snow card in Creative Basic (with different music and picture) added on!
You can download it from here:

http://www.loire-gites.eu/xmas/xmas12.exe



This is an installation file for the  the compiled program here, but I could post the code if anyone is interested (though it's all bog standard stuff).  It will put the program in the C:\xmascard directory or elsewhere, as I discovered that folder names with space like 'program files' created problems! (especially with the bit in Creative Basic)

I'd be grateful to hear if it works ok... I had trouble trying to make it visible on different screen resolutions, something I must really learn to do in 2013!  I haven't got much beyond getscreensize varW, varH but then I get lost in positioning controls!  

I plan to make it available to friends, relations and ex gite visitors in about a week!  
Seasons greetings to all!

[Doc]

I'd be grateful to hear if it works ok...

Howdy sir!
Once I got past all of the complaints from my anti-virus software, everything seemed to work just fine.
I really enjoyed the "AngesDeNosCamps" music and the postcard scene that you selected is very nice. (Looks very cold too!)

Not sure what to suggest in regard to the AV software complaining so much:
It complained that I was downloading an .exe file...
It complained and issued a warning when I extracted the .exe file...
It complained when I started the program...
It didn't like it at all when the main program called the postcard .exe file...

If it helps to know... I'm running Windows 8 on an inexpensive laptop, with a second monitor attached the the anti-virus software is Avast. Hope all of the above is helpful to you.

-Doc-

[AdrianFox]

Thanks for the comments Doc.  That was one of my fears that in distributing this to lots of people who know little about computers they may be put off by the 'Don't do this' warnings from Microsoft or virus programs. 

That is why I usually make a proper Installation program using a program called Excelsior, but bizarrely, as I've posted in a question below, although all the necessary files are extracted and installed from it, (and there appears to be no difference in any of them in terms of file size or anything else)  the music just disappears.   I can't think why this should be!  It would seem that the exe file is being corrupted in some way in process.

(I have used both Windows 7 and Windows XP and neither gives me any warnings, though I'm using AVG as the AV program.)
Thanks for giving it a try!

[Bill-Bo]

Adrian,

Impressive, but!! After clicking the
second icon and then 'Music', I get
no sound. Also, no poem when I click
'Voice.' Nothing happens when I
click the 1st icon 'Children's Choir.'

I am running it on a 64-bit Vista. I'll
try it on my Win 7 later.

Neat how you did the joke sequence.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New
Year.

Bill

[GWS]

Adrian,

Very nicely done  .. works perfectly here on XP and NVidia 7600 graphics card.

best wishes,

Graham

[AdrianFox]

Bo Bo... I think the no music problem is to do with the d3drm.dll file.  If not, it might be that if you have installed into the C:/program files directory the gap in the name means it can't find the music due to an error in my coding (Larry has just written to me about it).
In any case, I've found several friends who can't run the music or are having difficulties with the zip file that I have replaced  the mp3 files with wav ones and used the much simpler 'playwave "blahblah.wav",@syndasync'   method to play the music. 
I will be putting the revised program in the download at http://www.loire-gites/xmas  page as an installation package which will put it  in c:/program files/xmas  with a desktop icon, but also with an uninstall program of course.

[Bill-Bo]

Adrian,

Here's what I found out. I installed in
a directory with no gap in its name and
EVERYthing worked fine.

Still impressived.

Bill

[AdrianFox]

Thanks for that Bill Bo.   Yes, Larry had explained to me that the code I was using made the program look for a music file at C:\program  ..... and then read 'files etc etc as gibberish, so gave me some code to create a path name that would overcome that.  As the code would still not work in the Creative Basic bit,  I have altered the download directory on the installation file to c:\xmascard  (no gaps) and now everything is fine.
I have put everything now in a 'proper' installation file which will be more user friendly for friends and relations and which 'runs' the program on install.  It can also be uninstalled in the usual way to remove all files.

thanks for your help and feedback.

[Copex]

404 - File or directory not found.
The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

[AdrianFox]

   Thanks Copex!   I managed to put a comma in a file name rather than a period!   I'm having far too many of these 'senior' moments recently.... it's either old age or the extremely good red wine we get over here!
I trust the download will now work!

[Copex]

cool, avast grumbles about it, though it works on my win7 sound and all :-) i could look at the files extracted, is the speech a mp3 or are you doing Text to speech?

[AdrianFox]

I just made an mp3 of the speech file using the on line speech synthesiser  that GWS posted about:  http://www.ivona.com/en/#

It was very tedious as I had to do three or four lines at a time and then edit out all the gaps in the audio file!  But the 'trial' Ivona file for download demanded about 3.5 GIGA bytes of space,  so I gave up on that!   

With Larry's help I am now clear on how to embed and play MP3 files, a big advantage given their small  size compared to wave  files!

Have a great Xmas.

[GWS]

Cripes Adrian .. that's a big file .. 

I assume you refer to some generated speech sound file.
I haven't tried creating a sound file yet, but I have never come across a sound file that large.

The whole Ivona system is under 5 Mb on my machine 

Quite nice too - it speaks the time to me on the quarter hour .. 

best wishes,

Graham

[AdrianFox]

I may not have made that very clear, sorry!   

What I tried to download was a trial version of the Ivona program (the Ivona Mini Reader)  but this meant a huge download after the relatively small installation file. It definitely warned me I might need 1 to 3 Gb of disk space!  I wondered if this was because of all the different 'voices' it gives you access to?

Which module did you download that was only 5Mb?

The voice file I made for the Xmas card was only 1.6 Mb of course!

[GWS]

Hi Adrian,

Ah . that might explain it ..  you'd be accessing lots of voices

I went straight to the Shop (top right of their main page), scrolled down the page to the American English - 1 Voice (Salli) at 49 euros, and downloaded that.

When it installs, you get the reader and mini-reader included.  The whole thing on hard disk is under 5 Mbytes.

all the best,

Graham

[AdrianFox]

Yes, thanks for that.  I completed the download this evening and discovered that the Amy voice alone, the 'English' English one, takes up 227 Mbytes,  while the Reader and various DLL files are another 10 Mb or so.  It seems like the Mini Reader is the most compact bit but I am assuming it still needs access to the Voices folder and files?
It's almost perfect but she (Amy) has difficulty with certain words and elisions.  She comes a-cropper with anything that is not modern, especially a word like 'Nevermore' in the poem pastiche I did!

Very interesting.  Did you actually buy a copy?  I will use it a lot till the end of the trial period and then see if it would be worth keeping.  It is much better and more soothing than any of the other speech synthesis programs I've heard, and you could easily listen comfortably to a book being read to you last thing at night!  It might drive my wife mad though, so I'd have to listen on headphones!   

[GWS]

Ah yes - my Salli voice is just over 200 Mbytes - I missed that directory 

Yes I bought it - I thought it sounded pretty good, and was hooked when I found it could speak anything copied to the clipboard  - which is easy to do from either CB or IWB.

I thought the price was quite reasonable.  Might buy a man's voice as well while their sale is on 

all the best,

Graham