Let’s Talk Software Tech Page

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View the Lesson Ideas Page for Let’s Talk

Let’s Talk CD uses a little known but powerful part of the Microsoft Windows operating system call “the Speech Application” (SAPI for short). It comes pre-installed in Windows, but some older computers may have uninstalled it at some point. We’ve included a copy of it on the Let’s Talk CD. Microsoft put out two versions of it, and Let’s Talk uses the more popular ‘version 4’ -so read our tech notes below with that in mind.

Troubleshooting Installation in Windows XP, 7, 8, and 10

If you get a SAPI error message at start up,
or only have one voice to choose from for your character,

Then you need to install the two Speech Applications (SAPI4 and SAPI5) found in the SAPI_installers folder on the Let’s Talk CD. These will install the two required Microsoft Speech Applications. Find them on your CD and double click 4 to install, then 5.

NOTES:

How can I delete lessons?
Open the c:\programs\Lets-talk\Lessons folder on your computer and manually delete them.

Speech “TOO FAST” ?

One customer has reported that the text-to-speech speed was very fast on their computer. We can’t duplicate it. However, there is a speed control in the Windows Control Panel -> Speech Recognition -> Text to Speech link.

View more lesson ideas for Let’s Talk

PROBLEMS~SOLUTIONS

Problem: 
I only see ONE “voice” to select for the onscreen characters.
I see NO voices to select for onscreen characters.

Solution:

Open the files on the Let’s Talk CD and install SAPI 4 (the msttsl file on the CD) to add more voices.

Most Windows operating systems came with 3 or 4 different voices. But on some computers, they were not installed or have been inadvertently uninstalled. Some versions of Windows 8 only have one voice. Installing SAPI 4 msttsl file from the CD will correct that.

Alternately, you an download additional SAPI 4.0 text to speech “voices” from www.bytecool.com/voices.htm. Click the “free text to speech engines” “Mary, Mike, Sam and More” for Sapi4.0. The American English voices download for Sapi4 are also good to go. “Msttsl” stands for the Microsoft text to speech voices which are available to freely install on your computer. You could also reinstall them from your Windows disc.

The following issues seem to be old problems that Windows Updates and later versions of Windows have solved.

Problem: 
Playback of Lesson stops. Continue Button doesn’t appear on first screen. Or… Some Content doesn’t appear, or doesn’t save.

Solutions:

Update: This seems to happen if you type in the ‘intro’ line field on the first screen, and then go back and edit that line.  Solution: Fully delete the text in the intro line field before editing in new text. Or, put text into that field and leave it alone!  (fix coming)

1)     Shorten the amount of text you have in the saved lesson. For some reason on some computers, too much text in any of the fields you fill in will cause the program not to work or cause the continue button NOT to appear.

Also… typing odd characters and including too many spaces into your lesson text can throw off how the program interprets your XML-stored lesson text. Texts to avoid:  quotes “ –and > and < and <>  –as these are part of the XML code texts. **If you type a lesson that seems ‘whacked’ or won’t run after you save it, but thought it was a work of genius and are upset because you think you’ve “lost” all the text….then do this: Use My Computer or Windows Explorer (same thing) to navigate to c:\programs\lets-talk and open the Lessons folder. There you’ll see your lesson  “lessonname.xml” file. You can print it out to save your treatise, or RIGHT click it and select “open with notepad.”  Then edit your text and save it back to that folder. Do not delete any of the XML tags bracketed by < and >.  You also want to avoid characters such as “?” in the title. Weird. IF you have a lesson that fails to save or open, go into the Lessons folder through Windows Explorer and correct the XML file. (You can have two identical computers, and one will get the error and one won’t. Don’t know why.)

2)  You may have created a lesson, then attempted to re-edit it without clicking the SAVE button. Always remember to click the SAVE button found on the fourth and final page of the Lesson Builder screen BEFORE attempting to replay a lesson.

3)    So far we’ve had two customers with DELL computers report that the “continue” button just won’t appear after the Lesson Introduction they created.  Please email us if this problem applies to youand tell us what brand of computer you have and which operating system it is running.

4)  If all else fails, do this: Exit out of Let’s Talk, and restart it. It only takes a moment, and has been known to get rid of problems.

If you still have problems with saving/continuing… You might also change the Let’s Talk startup icon’s compatibility properties to “run as a Windows 98” program. This causes XP to run the program in a “gentle” mode and can solve some problems.

5)   Make sure you’re running Let’s Talk under the Admin login with full rights, and NOT under a Limited User sub-account. Let’s Talk needs to ‘save’ it’s files to your harddrive and the Limited account won’t let it do that.

Problem: 
Can’t SAVE or FIND a lesson file you’ve created.

Solution: In XP make sure you are logged in as a user with full admin privileges so the program can save your file to the harddrive. Also… make sure you haven’t put any “characters” in the lesson title (such as “~” or “?”). The XML based editor may read it wrong.

If you “can’t find” the files you saved on Windows 7 (and maybe 8), they may be hiding in Windows’ annoying “virtual storage” folder.

Problem:
One of the following error messages appears on your computer during installation or use of Let’s Talk

• Tv_enua.dll error    No voices installed

• Sapi4 not installed   No Speech Engine Installed

• “Macromedia Projector has encountered a problem and must close.”

• Or simply…the program starts up, gets past the opening screen and crashed or closes.

INFO & Solution:

You need to install the Microsoft Speech Application that runs the ‘voices’ in Let’s Talk. Follow steps 1 and 2 below…

Let’s Talk utilizes a specialized portion of the Windows known as the Microsoft Speech Application. It’s called “Sapi” and “spchapi” for short.   

“Sapi” has two parts to install:

1) The first part, Sapi 4, is the Speech Engine itself that contains the voices. Install it from the CD.

If you have the Full Version of Let’s Talk CD, we have put a copy of Sapi4.0 in a folder on the CD. Use Windows Explorer to locate it in the Sapi_installers folder on the CD. Double click Sapi4_install.exe to install it.

((Note: If you have the Trial Version of Let’s Talk CD, download Sapi 4.0 from here and unzip it to your Desktop, then install it.  5mb download))

2) The second part of the Speech Engine is called spchapi.exe  (“api” meaning “application”). It tells the speech engine how to run with certain applications such as Let’s Talk. Install it from the folder on the CD.

If you have the Full Version of Let’s Talk CD, we have put a copy of spchapi.exe in the Sapi_installers folder on the CD. It is labeled “sapi5_install.” (Mea culpa note: We misnamed it on the CD!  It should have been labelled “spchapi.exe”, but we instead labelled it sapi5_install). Use Windows Explorer to locate it on your Let’s Talk CD. Double-click Sapi5_install.exe to install it on your computer.

((Note: If you have the Trial Version of Let’s Talk CD, download spchapi.zip here as a zip file. Double click it to unzip it to your Desktop, then double click spchapi.exe to install it. 800kb download – small))

Ok….what if you’re still getting the error messages, now what?

SECOND POSSIBLE SOLUTION –-IF solution #1 doesn’t work and you have XP:
If installing the two files above in solution #1 does not correct the problem follow these instructions:

Problem: A couple of Let’s Talk customers with Windows XP, report that installing the two mentioned parts of the Microsoft Speech engine still didn’t solve their problem. After some investigation, we have discovered that another program already installed on their computer had mis-registered part of the speech application in the Windows registry. (Can happen if you install an odd internet plug-in, or piece of kids software).

Solution: We have been able to recreate the problem and solve it using the following registry edit. It is possible that this problem could affect Windows Me or W98, but we have not had this particular problem reported on those older operating systems. The good news is that this registry edit has solved the problem on each XP computer which couldn’t run Let’s Talk. The following should only be done by someone with good eyesight and a steady hand, who can read and follow instructions well and work carefully! 

Questions? Email neil@sundaysoftware.com

Learn more about Let’s Talk