Listen Method

[Microsoft Agent is deprecated as of Windows 7, and may be unavailable in subsequent versions of Windows.]

Description

Turns on Listening mode (speech recognition) for a timed period.

Syntax

agent.Characters("CharacterID").Listen** State

Part	Description
State	Required. A Boolean value that determines whether to turn Listening mode on or off. True Turns Listening mode on. False Turns Listening mode off.

Remarks

Setting this method to True enables Listening mode (turns on speech recognition) for a fixed period of time (10 seconds). While you cannot set the value of the time-out, you can turn off Listening mode before the time-out expires. If you (or another client) successfully set Listening mode on and you attempt to set this property to True before the time-out expires, the method succeeds and resets the time-out. However, if the Listening mode is on because the user is pressing the Listening key, the method succeeds, but the time-out is ignored and the Listening mode ends based on the user's interaction with the Listening key.

This method succeeds only when called by the input-active client and if speech services have been started. To ensure that speech services have been started, query or set the SRModeID or set the Voice setting for a Command before you call Listen otherwise the method will fail. To detect the success of this method, call it as a function and it will return a Boolean value indicating whether the method succeeded.

   If Genie.Listen(True) Then
      'The method succeeded

   Else
      ' The method failed

   End If

The method also fails if the user is pressing the Listening key and you attempt to set Listen to False. However, if the user has released the Listening key and Listening mode has not timed out, it will succeed.

Listen also fails if there is no compatible speech engine available that matches the character's LanguageID setting, the user has disabled speech input using the Microsoft Agent property sheet, or the audio device is busy.

When you successfully set this method to True, the server triggers the ListenStart event. The server sends ListenComplete when the Listening mode time-out completes or when you set Listen to False.

This method does not automatically call Stop and play a Listening state animation as the server does when the Listening key is pressed. This enables you to determine whether to interrupt the current animation using the ListenStart animation by calling Stop and playing your own appropriate animation. However, the server does call Stop and plays a Hearing state animation when a user utterance is detected.

See Also

LanguageID property, ListenComplete event, ListenStart event