Speech Synthesis:

javax.speech.synthesis 
 

·         A speech synthesizer is a speech engine that converts text to speech. The javax.speech.synthesispackage defines the Synthesizer interface to support speech synthesis plus a set of supporting classes and interfaces.

• "Hello World!": a simple example of speech synthesis

"Hello World!"

The following code shows a simple use of speech synthesis to speak the string "Hello World".

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import javax.speech.*;

import javax.speech.synthesis.*;

import java.util.Locale;

public class HelloWorld {

   public static void main(String args[]) {

           try {

                   // Create a synthesizer for English

                   Synthesizer synth = Central.createSynthesizer(

                          new SynthesizerModeDesc(Locale.ENGLISH));

                   // Get it ready to speak

                   synth.allocate();

                   synth.resume();

                   // Speak the "Hello world" string

                   synth.speakPlainText("Hello, world!", null);

                   // Wait till speaking is done

                   synth.waitEngineState(Synthesizer.QUEUE_EMPTY);

                   // Clean up

                   synth.deallocate();

           } catch (Exception e) {

                   e.printStackTrace();

           }

   }

}

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This example illustrates the four basic steps which all speech synthesis applications must perform. Let's examine each step in detail.

·         Create: The Central class of javax.speech package is used to obtain a speech synthesizer by calling the createSynthesizer method. The SynthesizerModeDesc argument provides the information needed to locate an appropriate synthesizer. In this example a synthesizer that speaks English is requested.

·         Allocate and Resume: The allocate and resume methods prepare the Synthesizer to produce speech by allocating all required resources and putting it in the RESUMED state.

·         Generate: The speakPlainText method requests the generation of synthesized speech from a string.

·         Deallocate: The waitEngineState method blocks the caller until the Synthesizer is in theQUEUE_EMPTY state - until it has finished speaking the text. The deallocate method frees the synthesizer's resources.