Delphi and Microsoft Agent

Create a Delphi application and drop a TAgent component, a memo and a button:

Now we only need to create and activate the character, which is easy enough to do:

Agent1.active:=true;

But before we do this we need to decide which agent we want to use and then load the agent into the TAgent component like so:

Agent1.characters.load('Merlin','merlin.acs');
Merlin:=Agent1.Characters.Character('Merlin');

To make Merlin read what is in the memo, we would call the Speak() method:

Merlin.speak(memo.text, '')  

Before we make Merlin speak, we have to be able to see him, so we call the Show() method:

Merlin.show();

So, our code should look something like this:

 var
  Form1: TForm1;
 peedy,Merlin:IAgentCtlCharacterEx;
implementation
{$R *.dfm}
procedure TForm1.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
begin
Agent1.characters.load('Merlin','merlin.acs');
Merlin:=Agent1.Characters.Character('Merlin');
Agent1.Connected:=true;
end;
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
Merlin.show(false);
Merlin.speak(memo1.text, '');
end;
procedure TForm1.FormCloseQuery(Sender: TObject; var CanClose:
Boolean);
begin
Agent1.Characters.Unload('Merlin');
end;

Here's a test run of the application:

The code above is fine, insofar as getting Merlin to talk. But it is not very well coded. For example, our application will crash if the user presses button1 while Merlin is busy reading. So we need to make a provision for that. To handle checks like that we make use of the loadrequest method:

loadrequest:=Agent1.characters.load('Merlin','merlin.acs');

So our revised code will look like this:

procedure TForm1.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
begin
loadrequest:=Agent1.characters.load('Merlin','merlin.acs');
if loadrequest.Status <> 0 then begin
//could not load agent
messagedlg('Merlin is already loaded',mtError,[mbOK],0);
exit;
end;
Merlin:=Agent1.Characters.Character('Merlin');
Agent1.Connected:=true;
end;

An alternative to the above code would be to use the try...except block:

try
loadrequest:=Agent1.characters.load('Merlin','merlin.acs');
except on E:Exception do
begin
messagedlg(E.Message,mtError,[mbOK],0);
exit;
end;