Dispatching a Win32 COM in the background?

[Steven M. Castellotti]

Thanks a lot guys, your suggestions have worked perfectly!

	Just for the record, here's what the full implementation looks like.

This code allows text to be piped to Microsoft's Text-To-Speech
sythesizer, spoken in the background, in a thread-safe manner:

#####################################################################

import threading

class Background_TTS(threading.Thread):

   def __init__(self, debug_mode):
      threading.Thread.__init__(self)

      self.debug_mode = debug_mode
      self.loop = 1

      import Queue
      self.text_queue = Queue.Queue()


   #####################################################################

   def Speak(self, text):
      self.text_queue.put(text)		

		
   #####################################################################

   def stop(self):

      self.loop = 0
		

   #####################################################################
		
   def run(self):
      from win32com.client import constants
      import win32com.client
      import time

      speech = win32com.client.Dispatch("SAPI.SpVoice")

      while self.loop:

      if not(self.text_queue.empty()):
         text = self.text_queue.get()				
         speech.Speak(text)
         time.sleep(.001)

#####################################################################

initialization looks like this:

try:
   self.speech = Background_TTS(self.gameInformation.debug_mode)
   self.speech.start()
except:
   if (self.gameInformation.debug_mode):
   print "Error Initializing Microsoft Speech API."
else:
   self.text_to_speech_enabled = 1

#####################################################################

calling the synthesizer:

self.speech.Speak(text)

#####################################################################

and finally, stopping the process:

self.speech.stop()



	Once again guys, thanks!

-Steve Castellotti
 SteveC (at) innocent.com
 http://cogengine.sourceforge.net/



On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 18:56:05 -0500, David LeBlanc wrote:

> Hmmm... and the run method of Background could be sitting on one end of
> a Queue (Queue is thread-safe: see your python doc for details) that's
> buffering the asyncronous calls on the speacher. The main task then just
> stuffs a talk request into the queue and the Background processes it
> when it gets to it.
> 
> David LeBlanc
> Seattle, WA USA
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: python-list-admin at python.org
>> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Peter Hansen Sent:
>> Wednesday, June 19, 2002 16:47
>> To: python-list at python.org
>> Subject: Re: Dispatching a Win32 COM in the background?
>>
>>
>> "Steven M. Castellotti" wrote:
>> >
>> > 2) Make the call inside a thread which produces the same effect.
>>
>> This might work (I don't know anything about COM though).  Try putting
>> your own code inside the run method of a thread:
>>
>> import threading
>> class Background(threading.Thread):
>>     def __init__(self):
>>         threading.Thread.__init__(self)
>>
>>     def run(self):
>>         print 'Starting'
>>         pass   # your own code goes here
>>         print 'Done'
>>
>> >>> b = Background()
>> >>> b.start()
>> Starting
>> <possibly a pause here?>
>> Done
>>
>> If at this point you get a >>> prompt back right away, but the speech
>> generation is carrying on "in the background" then you're all set. Make
>> sure you do this with code you've already tested outside of the thread,
>> so you'll know that any failure is not the fault of your own code...
>>
>> -Peter
>> --
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list