NAME

Win32::MSAgent -

SYNOPSIS

use Win32::MSAgent;
my $agent = Win32::MSAgent->new('Genie');

my $char = $agent->Characters('Genie');
$char->Voice('Dutch', 'Alexander');
$char->SoundEffectsOn(1);
$char->Show();

$char->MoveTo(300,300);
sleep(5);

foreach my $animation ($char->AnimationNames)
{
    my $request = $char->Play($animation);
    $char->Speak($animation);
    my $i = 0;
    while (($request->Status == 2) || ($request->Status == 4))
    { $char->Stop($request) if $i >10; sleep(1);  $i++}
}

DESCRIPTION

Win32::MSAgent allows you to use the Microsoft Agent 2.0 OLE control in your perl scripts. From the Microsoft Website: "With the Microsoft Agent set of software services, developers can easily enhance the user interface of their applications and Web pages with interactive personalities in the form of animated characters. These characters can move freely within the computer display, speak aloud (and by displaying text onscreen), and even listen for spoken voice commands."

Since the MS Agent itself is only available on MS Windows platforms, this module will only work on those.

PREREQUISITES

In order to use the MSAgent in your scripts, you need to download and install some components. They can all be downloaded for free from http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/devdownloads.htm

1. Microsoft Agent Core Components

2. Localized Language Components

3. MS Agent Character files (.acs files)

4. Text To Speech engine for your language

5. SAPI 4.0 runtime

Optionally you can install the Speech Recognition Engines and the Speech Control Panel. The Speech Recognition part of MS Agent is not supported in this version of Win32::MSAgent

USAGE

There is no POD documentation on the methods and stuff yet. I will write this for upcoming versions. In this version the Agent control and the Characters object are implemented. No events are implemented yet, nor any of the Speech Recognition stuff. Please take the MS Agent Platform SDK helpfile (download from http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/devdownloads.htm) for documentation on the various methods and properties.

BUGS

Hey! Give me some slack! This is only version 0.01! Sure there are bugs!

SUPPORT

The MS Agent itself is supported on MS' public newsgroup news://microsoft.public.msagent You can email the author for support on this module.

AUTHOR

Jouke Visser
jouke@cpan.org
http://jouke.pvoice.org

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2002 Jouke Visser. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

SEE ALSO

perl(1).

"Yet Another True Value"; __END__