NAME

Speech::Synthesiser - Generic speech syntheiser interface

SYNOPSIS

  use Speech::Synthesiser;
  $synth = new Speech::Synthesiser 
                -type => 'SynthName',
                # other args
                ;

  start $synth;
  stop $synth;

  @voices = voice_list $synth;
  voice $synth "myvoice";

  intro $synth;
  speak $synth $text;

DESCRIPTION

Speech::Synthesiser provides a simple way to add speech to a perl application. It is a generic class which can be used to talk to any speech synthesiser given a suitable interface module.

Actual sound output is provided by an auiliary class, by default Audio::FileWave which runs an external program to play sound, but you can replace it with another class if you have a better way of playing sounds (eg a perl extension providing sound output), see the documentation for Speech::FileWave for the interface an alternative should provide should implement.

If you do use Speech::FileWave you may need to set up the command it uses to play sounds, see the documentation for "set_play_command" in Audio::FileWave.

$synth = new Speech::Synthesiser -type => 'SynthName', ARGS;

Create a synthesiser of the named type. Looks for a package Speech::SynthName::Synthesiser. All arguments are passed to the creation function for that class.

The following arguments have special meaning to the Speech::Synthesiser new method.

-waveimp CLASS

CLASS is the name of a perl package which implements wave playing. If not given it defaults to Audio::FileWave.

-waveargs [ @ARGS ]

@ARGS are passed to the new method of the wave class. For Audio::FileWave this defaults to ( "riff" ).

start $synth;

Do whatever is ncecessary to prepar ethe synthesiser fo work. Returns true if all is well, false otherwise. In the event of an error the variable $synth_error conatains a description of it.

stop $synth;

Close down the synthesiser, releasing any resources it holds. The synthesiser may be restarted with "start", but any state may have been lost.

@voices = voice_list $synth;

Return a list of the voices available from this synthesiser.

voice $synth "myvoice";

Select a voice.

voice_description $synth;

Returns a description of the voice.

synth_description $synth;

Synthesize a description of the synthesiser,

speak $synth $text;

Speak the given text. Not much more to be said really:-).

EXAMPLE

The following should talk to you, all else being equal. Uses the festival synthesiser, so you will need to run a festival server on the named machine.

    use Speech::Synthesiser;

    $synth = new Speech::Synthesiser 
                -type => 'Festival',
                -host => 'festival-server.mynet';

    start $synth 
         || die "can't talk to festival - $synth_error";

    speak $synth "We are perl, prepare for assimilation.";

AUTHOR

Richard Caley, R.Caley@ed.ac.uk

SEE ALSO

Speech::Festival, Speech::Festival::Synthesiser, Audio::FileWave, perl(1), festival(1), Festival Documentation