On Tuesday, the makers of indie couch-gaming collection Sportsfriends announced that the title, which launched on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 earlier this year, finally had a home-computer release date. This Friday, shoppers at Steam and Humble Store will be able to purchase the four-game collection for $15 on Mac, Linux, and Windows.
Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac 16.29 VL Multilingual microsoft office torrent office for mac free Download Descriptions for Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac 16.29 VL Office 2019 for Mac is designed from the ground up to take advantage of the latest Mac features, including. Mar 10, 2016Â To clarify, this is an offer from Microsoft to be performed with the Microsoft Partner of your choosing. This is not something Microsoft does directly, nor is the intention to make you switch vendors, as we can work with whoever you choose and provide them the Microsoft SAM funding.
However, the announcement came with an asterisk not normally seen in computer-game launches: the collection's most striking game, Johann Sebastian Joust, would not be part of the Windows build.
According to the game's Kickstarter site, the computer build of Sportsfriends has been delayed by efforts to add computer compatibility to the motion-sensitive PlayStation Move wands used to control the game. The team reported 'hairy Bluetooth technical issues' on all three platforms in a September update, which acknowledged progress on Mac and Linux builds thanks to workarounds, but much less progress in the Windows version.
At that time, the team reported that getting Windows PCs to reliably recognize Bluetooth-enabled PS Move wands was 'extremely spotty' and pointed to Move's 'somewhat non-standard Bluetooth communication protocol.' The Joust team acknowledged using open-source resources like psmoveapi (though it didn't mention the similar moveonpc project), then reached out with a job opportunity for a programmer to solve the Windows pairing issues.
'A pretty epic kludge'
In the end, Joust's makers couldn't pull it off, and the team's Tuesday Kickstarter update quoted a Microsoft engineer's response when the devs sought help directly from the Windows maker: 'This is NOT possible in any way, shape, or form.'
'Some people in [the psmoveapi] community have been tinkering with Move on Windows, but nobody has the controller pairing in a reliable, consumer-friendly way,' developer Douglas Wilson told Ars in an e-mail interview. 'Bluetooth on Windows is a mess.' He suggested that 'possibly if you could write your own low-level filter driver, you could get [Move wand] pairing to work robustly [in Windows], but that was way beyond our skill, and we weren't even able to find someone who we could hire to do it.'
As such, Windows users who pledged for a working copy of Joust on their platform will remain out of luck for the foreseeable future (though they can still download a copy for another OS, if they'd like). The developers said they may release a 'custom Linux Joust distro that you can boot into from your Windows machine by USB stick' for shoppers currently left in the cold. Joust's creators have also pledged to release the game's code as an open source project. 'The game was built on top of open source projects, and we feel some responsibility to give back to the community,' the team wrote.
When asked about development on Mac and Linux, Wilson admitted to just as many issues in making Sony's controllers work on other OSes. 'In my old prototype, you'd have to restart the entire program if you wanted to connect new or disconnected controllers,' Wilson wrote. 'We now support 'live' connects on Linux and OSX, but that was hard won, and took our main programmer Jonathan several months.' Wilson also clarified that Move support in OSX is run 'as a separate process' that can be killed and restarted on the fly as needed—'a pretty epic kludge,' in his words.
Mac and Linux fans will get a particularly useful new 'custom playlist' option in Joust's retail version, meaning they can better control the music that plays as friends weave and dodge each other while holding PS Move wands and playing one of our favorite games of 2014.
Microsoft Sam saying, 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1234567890 times.', followed by a demonstration of a glitch that occurs when the words soi/soy are entered (soi cannot be uppercase in Windows XP or it will say the letters) | |
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The Microsoft text-to-speech voices are speech synthesizers provided for use with applications that use the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) or the Microsoft Speech Server Platform. There are client, server, and mobile versions of Microsoft text-to-speech voices. Client voices are shipped with Windows operating systems; server voices are available for download for use with server applications such as Speech Server, Lync etc. for both Windows client and server platforms, and mobile voices are often shipped with more recent versions of Windows Phone. Windows 10 also brings the mobile text to speech voices to the desktop starting with the Anniversary Update.
Voices[edit]
Windows 2000 and XP[edit]
Microsoft Sam is the default text-to-speech male voice in Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It is used by Narrator, the screen reader program built into the operating system.
Microsoft Sam Mac
Microsoft Mike and Microsoft Mary are optional male and female voices respectively, available for download from the Microsoft website. Michael and Michelle are also optional male and female voices licensed by Microsoft from Lernout & Hauspie, and available through Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office 2003 or Microsoft Reader.
There are both SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 versions of these text-to-speech voices. SAPI 4 voices are only available on Windows 2000 and later Windows NT-based operating systems. While SAPI 5 versions of Microsoft Mike and Microsoft Mary are downloadable only as a Merge Module,[1] the installable versions may be installed on end users' systems by speech applications such as Microsoft Reader. SAPI 4 redistributable versions are downloadable for Windows 9x, although no longer from the Microsoft website.
Microsoft Sam, Microsoft Mike and Microsoft Mary can be used on Windows Vista and later with a third-party program (like Speakonia and TTSReader) installed on the machine that supports these operating systems; however, the speech patterns differ from the Windows XP versions of these voices. In addition, LH Michael and LH Michelle can work on Windows 7 and later if Speakonia and the SAPI 4 version of the voices in British English is downloaded.
Windows Vista and 7[edit]
Beginning with Windows Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft Anna is the default English voice. It is a SAPI5-only female voice and is designed to sound more natural than Microsoft Sam.[2]Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 and later install the Microsoft Anna voice on Windows XP systems for the voice-prompt direction feature. There is no male voice shipping with Windows Vista and Windows 7. A female voice called Microsoft Lili that replaces the earlier male SAPI5 voice 'Microsoft Simplified Chinese' is available in Chinese versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can also be obtained in non-Chinese versions of Windows 7 or Vista by installing the Chinese language pack.
In 2010, Microsoft released the newer Speech Platform compatible voices for Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech for use with client and server applications. These voices are available in 26 languages[3] and can be installed on Windows client and server operating systems. Speech Platform voices unlike SAPI 5 voices, are female-only, no male voices are released publicly yet.
Windows 8 and 8.1[edit]
In Windows 8, there are three new client (desktop) voices - Microsoft David (US male), Hazel (UK female) and Zira (US female) which sound more natural than the now-eliminated Microsoft Anna. The server versions of these voices are available via above mentioned Speech Platform for operating systems earlier than Windows 8. Unlike Windows 7 or Vista, one cannot use any third-party program for Microsoft Anna because there is no Anna Voice API for download. Other voices are available for specific language versions of either Windows 8 or Windows 8.1.[citation needed]
Windows 10 and later[edit]
In Windows 10, Microsoft Hazel was removed from the US English Language Pack and the Microsoft voices for Mobile (Phone/tablet) are available (Microsoft Mark and Microsoft Zira). These are the same voices found on Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile.
Microsoft Sam On Mac Download
Also with these voices language packs are also available for a variety of voices similar to that of Windows 8 and 8.1. None of these voices match the Cortana text-to-speech voice which can be found on Windows Phone 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 10 Mobile.
In an attempt to unify its software with Windows 10, all of Microsoft's current platforms use the same text-to-speech voices except for Microsoft David and a few others.
Mobile[edit]
Every mobile voice package has the combination of male/female, while most of the desktop voice packages have only female voices. All mobile voices have been made universal and any user who downloads the language pack of that choice will have one extra male and female voice per that package.
A hidden text-to-speech voice in Windows 10 called Microsoft Eva Mobile is present within the system. Users can download a pre-packaged registry file from the windowsreport.com website. Microsoft Eva is believed to be the early voice for Cortana until Microsoft replaced her with the voice of Jen Taylor in most areas.
These voices are updated with Windows to sound more natural than in the original version as seen in the Windows 10 Update.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^Speech SDK 5.1
- ^Chambers, Rob (August 29, 2006). 'Microsoft Anna - The new TTS voice in Vista'. MSDN Blogs. Microsoft. Retrieved June 26, 2015.
- ^http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh361572.aspx
External links[edit]
- Official website[dead link]