The Talking Moose

neuroshock · Post by **neuroshock** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 12:10 pm

Anyone here remember the old Talking Moose desktop toy from the 80's? For the unitiated, the Talking Moose was a simple applet on old Mac computers that periodically displayed an animated Bullwinkle-lookalike moose in the corner of the screen, spouting witty phrases or biting insults, as well as commenting on various activities like opening and closing programs or inserting disks. (The moose's behavior was highly customizable.) He's not for everybody, but I miss the guy.

Lo and behold, the project was resurrected for the modern Windows era:

http://www.halls.md/moose/index.htm

(There's also a Mac version at http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/moose.htm.)

It's a tiny, simple desktop Windows applet that seems to confine itself entirely to a nice and neat single directory (that is, there's no messy installation), but, much to my dismay, I cannot seem to get it to run in Wine, nor can I diagnose the problem. Can anyone else get it to work, or, if not, offer up some helpful suggestions?

Thanks!

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:13 pm

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:10 PM, neuroshock<[email protected]> wrote:

Anyone here remember the old Talking Moose desktop toy from the 80's? For the unitiated, the Talking Moose was a simple applet on old Mac computers that periodically displayed an animated Bullwinkle-lookalike moose in the corner of the screen, spouting witty phrases or biting insults, as well as commenting on various activities like opening and closing programs or inserting disks. (The moose's behavior was highly customizable.) He's not for everybody, but I miss the guy.

Lo and behold, the project was resurrected for the modern Windows era:

http://www.halls.md/moose/index.htm

(There's also a Mac version at http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/moose.htm.)

It's a tiny, simple desktop Windows applet that seems to confine itself entirely to a nice and neat single directory (that is, there's no messy installation), but, much to my dismay, I cannot seem to get it to run in Wine, nor can I diagnose the problem. Can anyone else get it to work, or, if not, offer up some helpful suggestions?

Appears to need vbruntimes (winetricks vbrun60). After that, installs
fine, and runs, but doesn't play. According to the website, it needs
voices, perhaps you can find some online/from windows and put them in
the right place.

For future reference, most people won't respond unless you try it
yourself and give the problem, with terminal output/symptoms...

--
-Austin

neuroshock · Post by **neuroshock** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 11:37 pm

austin987 wrote:On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:10 PM, neuroshock<[email protected]> wrote:
Anyone here remember the old Talking Moose desktop toy from the 80's? For the unitiated, the Talking Moose was a simple applet on old Mac computers that periodically displayed an animated Bullwinkle-lookalike moose in the corner of the screen, spouting witty phrases or biting insults, as well as commenting on various activities like opening and closing programs or inserting disks. (The moose's behavior was highly customizable.) He's not for everybody, but I miss the guy.

Lo and behold, the project was resurrected for the modern Windows era:

http://www.halls.md/moose/index.htm

(There's also a Mac version at http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/moose.htm.)

It's a tiny, simple desktop Windows applet that seems to confine itself entirely to a nice and neat single directory (that is, there's no messy installation), but, much to my dismay, I cannot seem to get it to run in Wine, nor can I diagnose the problem. Can anyone else get it to work, or, if not, offer up some helpful suggestions?
Appears to need vbruntimes (winetricks vbrun60). After that, installs
fine, and runs, but doesn't play. According to the website, it needs
voices, perhaps you can find some online/from windows and put them in
the right place.

For future reference, most people won't respond unless you try it
yourself and give the problem, with terminal output/symptoms...

--
-Austin

Thanks for the timely reply!

I had already succeeded in getting the applet installed. (My apologies for not being more clear in my first post.) And when the applet didn't work (see below for details), I installed Microsoft Text-to-Speech (see, for example, http://www.bytecool.com/voices.htm), but it didn't change anything.

When I attempt to run wine moose.exe, the icon correctly appears in my system tray, and the moose avatar itself correctly appears in the upper corner of the screen as expected. But there's clearly a problem, because the avatar shows the message "Voice Error: I'm sick" and won't play any audio or exhibit any animation.

Meanwhile, the output to the console consists of many (presumably harmless) warnings:

fixme:ole:OLEPictureImpl_Render Not quite correct implementation of rendering icons...

followed by four repetitions of:

E: shm.c: mmap() failed: Cannot allocate memory

and then:

pulse.c:200: pulse_new: Assertion `p->context' failed.
fixme:ntdll:RtlNtStatusToDosErrorNoTeb no mapping for 80000101
err:ole:COMPOBJ_DllList_Add couldn't load in-process dll L"C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Speech\\sapi.dll"
err:ole:create_server class {96749377-3391-11d2-9ee3-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {96749377-3391-11d2-9ee3-00c04f797396} could be created for context 0x5

(I have the library sapi.dll in the requested directory already), followed by many copies of:

fixme:ole:OleLoadPictureEx (0x134308c,18574,1,{7bf80980-bf32-101a-8bbb-00aa00300cab},x=0,y=0,f=0,0x32f398), partially implemented.

(Only the second number---in this case 18574---changes from line to line.)

If I quit and run the program again, I get slightly different error messages. This time, the middle block of errors is:

err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:create_server class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
fixme:ole:CoGetClassObject CLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVER not supported
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} could be created for context 0x17

Despite the slight differences in error messages to the console, I always get the same behavior: There's no voice or animation, and if I click on the moose avatar or right-click on the tray icon and select "Control Panel," the applet crashes with the message "Run-time error '-2147200966 (8004503a)': Automation error."

I hope this extra information is helpful. At the very least, solving this problem might help get text-to-speech working in wine more generally from now on.

Thanks!

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Wed Jul 15, 2009 11:53 pm

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 11:37 PM, neuroshock<[email protected]> wrote:

austin987 wrote:
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:10 PM, neuroshock<[email protected]> wrote:

Anyone here remember the old Talking Moose desktop toy from the 80's? For the unitiated, the Talking Moose was a simple applet on old Mac computers that periodically displayed an animated Bullwinkle-lookalike moose in the corner of the screen, spouting witty phrases or biting insults, as well as commenting on various activities like opening and closing programs or inserting disks. (The moose's behavior was highly customizable.) He's not for everybody, but I miss the guy.

Lo and behold, the project was resurrected for the modern Windows era:

http://www.halls.md/moose/index.htm

(There's also a Mac version at http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/moose.htm.)

It's a tiny, simple desktop Windows applet that seems to confine itself entirely to a nice and neat single directory (that is, there's no messy installation), but, much to my dismay, I cannot seem to get it to run in Wine, nor can I diagnose the problem. Can anyone else get it to work, or, if not, offer up some helpful suggestions?

Appears to need vbruntimes (winetricks vbrun60). After that, installs
fine, and runs, but doesn't play. According to the website, it needs
voices, perhaps you can find some online/from windows and put them in
the right place.

For future reference, most people won't respond unless you try it
yourself and give the problem, with terminal output/symptoms...

--
-Austin
Thanks for the timely reply!

I had already succeeded in getting the applet installed. (My apologies for not being more clear in my first post.) And when the applet didn't work (see below for details), I installed Microsoft Text-to-Speech (see, for example, http://www.bytecool.com/voices.htm), but it didn't change anything.

When I attempt to run wine moose.exe, the icon correctly appears in my system tray, and the moose avatar itself correctly appears in the upper corner of the screen as expected. But there's clearly a problem, because the avatar shows the message "Voice Error: I'm sick" and won't play any audio or exhibit any animation.

Meanwhile, the output to the console consists of many (presumably harmless) warnings:

fixme:ole:OLEPictureImpl_Render Not quite correct implementation of rendering icons...
followed by four repetitions of:

E: shm.c: mmap() failed: Cannot allocate memory
and then:

pulse.c:200: pulse_new: Assertion `p->context' failed.
fixme:ntdll:RtlNtStatusToDosErrorNoTeb no mapping for 80000101
err:ole:COMPOBJ_DllList_Add couldn't load in-process dll L"C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Speech\\sapi.dll"
err:ole:create_server class {96749377-3391-11d2-9ee3-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {96749377-3391-11d2-9ee3-00c04f797396} could be created for context 0x5
(I have the library sapi.dll in the requested directory already), followed by many copies of:

fixme:ole:OleLoadPictureEx (0x134308c,18574,1,{7bf80980-bf32-101a-8bbb-00aa00300cab},x=0,y=0,f=0,0x32f398), partially implemented.
(Only the second number---in this case 18574---changes from line to line.)

If I quit and run the program again, I get slightly different error messages. This time, the middle block of errors is:

err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:create_server class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
fixme:ole:CoGetClassObject CLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVER not supported
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} could be created for context 0x17
Despite the slight differences in error messages to the console, I always get the same behavior: There's no voice or animation, and if I click on the moose avatar or right-click on the tray icon and select "Control Panel," the applet crashes with the message "Run-time error '-2147200966 (8004503a)': Automation error."

I hope this extra information is helpful. At the very least, solving this problem might help get text-to-speech working in wine more generally from now on.

Native ole may help, though that may mess up other applications. Try
'winetricks dcom98'.

--
-Austin

neuroshock · Post by **neuroshock** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 2:45 am

Well, that helped with the huge list of repeated error messages. But the actual behavior of the program is exactly the same as before (no animation, no audio, crashing behavior), and I'm still getting the error messages:

fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L"Bonjour Service"): stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown IPPROTO_IP optname 0x00000013
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER {f689d7c8-6f1f-436b-8a53-e54fe351c322}: stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER {f689d7c8-6f1f-436b-8a53-e54fe351c322}: stub
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl -> SIO_ADDRESS_LIST_CHANGE request: stub
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:storage:StgCreateDocfile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl -> SIO_ADDRESS_LIST_CHANGE request: stub
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:mixer:ALSA_MixerInit No master control found on Intel ICH6 Modem, disabling mixer
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:create_server class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
fixme:ole:CoGetClassObject CLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVER not supported
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} could be created for context 0x17

Have you had any luck getting the program to function correctly on your end?

Thanks again for you assistance!

austin987 · Post by **austin987** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 2:51 am

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 2:45 AM, neuroshock<[email protected]> wrote:

Well, that helped with the huge list of repeated error messages. But the actual behavior of the program is exactly the same as before (no animation, no audio, crashing behavior), and I'm still getting the error messages:

fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0
fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L"Bonjour Service"): stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown IPPROTO_IP optname 0x00000013
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER {f689d7c8-6f1f-436b-8a53-e54fe351c322}: stub
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WS_setsockopt Unknown level: 0x00000029
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl SIO_GET_EXTENSION_FUNCTION_POINTER {f689d7c8-6f1f-436b-8a53-e54fe351c322}: stub
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl -> SIO_ADDRESS_LIST_CHANGE request: stub
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:storage:StgCreateDocfile Storage share mode not implemented.
fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl -> SIO_ADDRESS_LIST_CHANGE request: stub
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:iphlpapi:GetAdaptersAddresses no support for IPv6 addresses
fixme:advapi:DeregisterEventSource (0xcafe4242) stub
fixme:mixer:ALSA_MixerInit No master control found on Intel ICH6 Modem, disabling mixer
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
err:ole:create_server class {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} not registered
fixme:ole:CoGetClassObject CLSCTX_REMOTE_SERVER not supported
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {65dbddef-0725-11d3-b50c-00c04f797396} could be created for context 0x17
Have you had any luck getting the program to function correctly on your end?

I haven't tried again...but looking at the log, appears that this is
the problem:
{65DBDDEF-0725-11D3-B50C-00C04F797396} MSVoiceData Class Msttsdrv.MSVoiceData.1

perhaps text to speech has some dependency..

--
-Austin

Post by **dimesio** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:51 am

austin987 wrote: I haven't tried again...but looking at the log, appears that this is
the problem:
{65DBDDEF-0725-11D3-B50C-00C04F797396} MSVoiceData Class Msttsdrv.MSVoiceData.1

perhaps text to speech has some dependency..

I haven't tried this particular app, but Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000 uses Microsoft's Text-to-Speech engine to read scripts aloud, and it works fine on my system without any overrides.

But doesn't this:

Code: Select all

pulse.c:200: pulse_new: Assertion `p->context' failed.

suggest pulseaudio may be the problem?

neuroshock · Post by **neuroshock** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:08 am

Thanks for the additional input!

What do you see when you folks try to run it on your computer? It's a tiny program that lives safely in its own directory and can be deleted in a cinch afterward, so it shouldn't bee to risky to try it for yourselves.

Do you get the "I'm sick" message, the lack of animation and audio, and does it crash when you click the moose avatar or try to open the control panel? If you're getting the same behavior as I am, then it might be more straightforward for you fellows who know what you're doing to debug the program on your end rather than hope that I'm savvy enough (sorry I'm still so new to this!) to identify the smoking gun myself and pass it along to you.

I think that if anyone can get it to work, then that would be a great start. And maybe we'd learn more about the MS text-to-speech system in the process.

Thanks again for the help! It's greatly appreciated.

Post by **dimesio** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:01 pm

neuroshock wrote:Thanks for the additional input!

What do you see when you folks try to run it on your computer? It's a tiny program that lives safely in its own directory and can be deleted in a cinch afterward, so it shouldn't bee to risky to try it for yourselves.

Do you get the "I'm sick" message, the lack of animation and audio, and does it crash when you click the moose avatar or try to open the control panel? If you're getting the same behavior as I am, then it might be more straightforward for you fellows who know what you're doing to debug the program on your end rather than hope that I'm savvy enough (sorry I'm still so new to this!) to identify the smoking gun myself and pass it along to you.

I think that if anyone can get it to work, then that would be a great start. And maybe we'd learn more about the MS text-to-speech system in the process.

Thanks again for the help! It's greatly appreciated.

I tried installing it to both a clean wineprefix and one with Movie Magic Screenwriter already installed with working text-to-speech. In both cases The Talking Moose gives me the "I'm sick" message and neither audio nor animation work.

I don't have pulseaudio installed on my system, and don't get the pulse.c error message.

I get the same OLE errors in the console as you did, and installing dcom98 gets rid of them, but doesn't fix the problem.

The control panel can be made to work by manually registering the sapi.dll the app itself installs:

Code: Select all

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\The Talking Moose XP!\sapi.dll"

I played around a bit with the sound options in winecfg, but it made no difference. I don't think it's a sound issue per se, as animation also doesn't work.

That's about the limit of my troubleshooting knowledge. At this point all I can suggest is filing a bug.

neuroshock · Post by **neuroshock** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:58 pm

dimesio wrote:
neuroshock wrote:Thanks for the additional input!

What do you see when you folks try to run it on your computer? It's a tiny program that lives safely in its own directory and can be deleted in a cinch afterward, so it shouldn't bee to risky to try it for yourselves.

Do you get the "I'm sick" message, the lack of animation and audio, and does it crash when you click the moose avatar or try to open the control panel? If you're getting the same behavior as I am, then it might be more straightforward for you fellows who know what you're doing to debug the program on your end rather than hope that I'm savvy enough (sorry I'm still so new to this!) to identify the smoking gun myself and pass it along to you.

I think that if anyone can get it to work, then that would be a great start. And maybe we'd learn more about the MS text-to-speech system in the process.

Thanks again for the help! It's greatly appreciated.
I tried installing it to both a clean wineprefix and one with Movie Magic Screenwriter already installed with working text-to-speech. In both cases The Talking Moose gives me the "I'm sick" message and neither audio nor animation work.

I don't have pulseaudio installed on my system, and don't get the pulse.c error message.

I get the same OLE errors in the console as you did, and installing dcom98 gets rid of them, but doesn't fix the problem.

The control panel can be made to work by manually registering the sapi.dll the app itself installs:
Code: Select all
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\The Talking Moose XP!\sapi.dll"
I played around a bit with the sound options in winecfg, but it made no difference. I don't think it's a sound issue per se, as animation also doesn't work.

That's about the limit of my troubleshooting knowledge. At this point all I can suggest is filing a bug.

Thanks for the help. And thanks for installing the applet and trying to get it to work yourself. I appreciate it.

I apologize again that I'm a bit new to this, but could you give me a couple of suggestions of information to include when I file this bug? We seem to have eliminated some of the error messages already---how much of our forum discussion here do you think I ought to include? What do you think are the most pertinent details? What kinds of data from our work here would be most crucial for the developers to see?

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 7:27 pm

A full but brief description of all cases you tested it under seems best (ex on clean wineprefix, with/without vbrun, with/without native ole). Attach different files containing terminal output for each case, or at least just the one on a clean wineprefix.