Hello Lebeau-Software subscribers,

Yes, I know, I've been silent for a long time. Too long, and for that I
apologize. But I am still around, still programming away at several
projects when I have time to do so (which is not as much as I would like
sometimes). Which brings me to today's many announcements.


-= MSAgent WebRing Membership =-
----------------------------------------
I have been supporting the MSAgent technology
(http://www.microsoft.com/msagent) for over 6 years now. Lebeau Software is
now a proud member of the the MSAgent WebRing (http://www.msagentring.org).
I should have joined this group years ago. Well, no time like the present,
right?


-= Upcoming Software Releases! =-
-------------------------------------

AgentCB v1.2
---------------
AgentCB v1.2 will now allow the user to choose their desired spoken Language
and TTS engine. This has been requested from non-English users of AgentCB
for awhile now, so I finally got it into AgentCB. Previous versions were
locked into using Enligh only. MSAgent, which AgentCB uses to read the
clipboard verbally, has always had the ability to generate spoken output in
many foreign languages (provided the necessary support files are installed
ahead of time). AgentCB will now be able to utilize this capability.

In addition, this version includes enhancements to the underlying MSAgent
support (for those of you familiar with my TMSAgent VCL component, this
version of AgentCB will be using the beta of the upcoming version of
TMSAgent), and users will also now be able to choose to use MSAgent
character files that are not installed in the default "MSAgent\Chars" folder
of the OS.

The current version of AgentCB is available at
http://agentcb.lebeausoftware.org. If anyone is interested in beta testing
the new version before I release it publically, feel free to contact me.


ICQLaunch v1.0.1.22
----------------------
The new version of ICQLaunch will add support for the recently-released ICQ
v5. Supporting ICQ v5 required several changes to ICQLaunch's internals.
Amongst the changes, however, allowed for the ability to support ICQ v5's
new Custom Status feature. ICQ is no longer locked into hard-coded statuses
like, "Away", "DND", etc. Users can now specify their own custom status
messages. The new version of ICQLaunch will support this feature, in
addition to supporting ICQ v5 in general like it as with previous versions
of ICQ.

The current version of ICQLaunch is available at
http://icqlaunch.lebeausoftware.org. If anyone is interested in beta
testing the new version before I release it publically, feel free to contact
me.


TMSAgent VCL v2.0
----------------------
The upcoming release of AgentCB is using the beta of the upcoming version of
TMSAgent as its MSAgent implementation. TMSAgent v2.0 is a major redesign
over the current version v1.5. Once AgentCB has been tested, and no
problems occur with the TMSAgent beta, I can then release v2.0 of TMSAgent.
And yes, this version will included native Borland C++ Builder 6 support - a
feature that is LONG overdue!


MSAgent ACS File Format Documentation
--------------------------------------------
For the past 2 years, I have been working on gaining an understanding of,
and documenting, the data format for MSAgent's ACS files. The ACS File
Format documentation has been available for download at
http://fileformats.lebeausoftware.org. I will be releasing a major update
to that documentation later this year. Many data fields that were unknown
to me a year ago have now been identified. The documentation is nearly
complete now, describing the entire ACS format in full now. The only thing
still eluding me is the algorithm for parsing the raw image data for
individual animation frames (although I can now identify everything else
about the frames), and a few minor miscellaneous fields. Other than that,
the rest of the data is fully documented now, and I have already begun
writing code to utilize this information.


-= New MSAgent Products in Planning Stages! =-
---------------------------------------------------

ACS File Viewer
-----------------
Using the knowledge I have gained by writing the ACS File Format
documentation, the first product that I will be releasing later this year,
probably during Summer 2005, will be an ACS File Viewer. This product will
be a test bed for me to solidify my general coding for processing ACS data.
Unlike other viewers already available, this program will not be using
Microsoft's own MSAgent engine (available at
http://www.microsoft.com/msagent) at all. I will be reading and displaying
the ACS file data directly. This will mean that performance of processing
the ACS information will be faster and better optimized, and will not
require commonly used "hacks" to make the MSAgent engine do things that it
was not originally designed for (re-parenting character windows without
messing up the OS, multiple instancing, etc). Also, ACS characters that are
loaded into the MSAgent engine by multiple processes at the same time,
whether by applications or by web pages, share a common instance of the
character onscreen. The viewer will bypass this, being a completely
self-contained application, one which can even run on machines that do not
have MSAgent installed at all.

ACD-to-ACD Convertor
--------------------------
After the ACD File Viewer is written, it will be a small jump to produce the
next product, an ACS-to-ACD Convertor, which will probably be released in
Fall/Winter 2005. The Agent Character Editor (ACE) that is provided by
Microsoft is currently the only software publically available that is
capable of producing compiled ACS files. ACE uses ACD project files to
organize the bitmaps, icons, sounds, and layout information that character
authors define when creating their custom ACS files. This convertor will be
able to reverse that process - extracting and generating the original ACD,
bitmap, icon, and sound files from ACS files for use with ACE. This product
is meant to be used by character authors who have lost their ACD project
files and need to restore them from the compiled ACS files.

I do realize that an ACS-to-ACD Convertor presents possible copyright
infrigement issues. Which is why the convertor will be the very first
shareware product offered by Lebeau Software. The evaluation version will
not support extracting the images and sounds from ACS files. These are the
key pieces of an ACS file's copyrighted intellectual material. Authors will
have to prove that they actually own the characters they wish to convert,
and will have to purchase the full version and licensing to allow their ACS
files to be converted to ACD. The licenses will encrypted and tied to both
the specific character being converted as well as to the character's owner
(and maybe also to machine hardware), and may also require online
validation. This is so that licenses cannot easily be distributed or hacked
by software pirates, or falsified to allow converting of characters by
people who do not actually own them.

Also, neither the evalutation nor full version will allow loading or
processing Microsoft's own characters (Merlin, Genie, Robby, and Peedy)
under any circumstances.


MSAgent Browser Plugins
---------------------------
After the ACS-to-ACD Convertor is written, the next project will be to
revive my old browser plugin for supporting MSAgent in Netscape. I will
update it to support Opera and Firefox, as well as give it a generic
interface so that Internet Explorer can use it as well. This way, a single
plugin can cater to multiple browsers without requiring separate specialized
versions for each browser, or different scripting for different browsers,
etc. Also, using my ACS File Format documentation to design my own
rendering engine will eliminate the dependancy on Microsoft's MSAgent
engine, thus allowing the plugin to also be ported to non-Microsoft
platforms (Linux, Mac, etc). This will introduce MSAgent to new
marketplaces that have been previously unexplored. I expect this product
won't be available until Summer/Winter 2006, but depending on the speed of
development of the other products, maybe I can push up the timetable 6
months or so.


Well, that is everything for now.


Until next time...

Remy Lebeau
Lebeau Software