Develop software that speaks and listens

Develop software that speaks and listens with SpeechKit™ components. Rapidly integrate speech technology and deploy speech-aware applications and web sites using your favorite RAD development environment:

• Microsoft Visual C#, .NET, Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET
• Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro
• Borland C++Builder, Delphi, JBuilder
• Macromedia Director, Flash, Authorware
• C/C++, Java, JavaScript, VBScript IDEs
• HTML editors

Chant® SpeechKit™ is comprised of components for speech recognition (i.e., speech-to-text) and speech synthesis (i.e., text-to-speech).

Overview

Chant® SpeechKit™ component software is for developing software that speaks and listens. Whether you develop desktop, server, mobile, telephony, Internet software, or web pages, SpeechKit™ components can transform text to speech for audio playback and speech to text for your software to process. This liberates your software from keypads, keyboards, and mice as primary input devices by letting end users talk with it.

With Chant® SpeechKit™ component software, you can:

• Voice-enable any type of application with SpeechKit™ components in ActiveX, C-DLL, COM, Java, .NET Framework, and VCL formats.
• Use built-in What Can I Say dialog to display what commands your application responds to and Where Can I Go dialog to display hypertext links that can be invoked by speaking the link text.
• Deploy your applications independent of specific recognizers and synthesizers with Chant® SpeechKit™ component support for Microsoft SAPI 3, SAPI 4, SAPI 5 and IBM SMAPI.
• Adjust recognizer, synthesizer, and audio run-time selections and property settings dynamically.

Develop applications that can speak instead of text only displays:

• Synthesize speech from anywhere within your application.
• Automatically synthesize message box text.
• Easily enumerate and select a voice and utilize multiple voices.
• Easily adjust the spoken output speed, volume, and pitch.
• Take advantage of built-in audio management and synthesize to the audio format needed by your application.
• Synthesize to wave audio files.

Develop applications that can respond to your voice instead of having to use a keyboard and mouse:

• Capture spoken input as if it was typed using a keyboard.
• Select menu and list items, click buttons, and hypertext links by speaking instead of using a mouse.
• Recognize spoken languages supported by recognizers.
• Manage context-based and context-free recognition by dynamically adding, removing, enabling, and disabling, command, grammar, and dictation vocabularies.
• Take advantage of built-in audio management and recognize from the audio format needed by your application.
• Recognize from wave audio files and save recorded audio.

Chant® SpeechKit™ 4 Developer Edition includes essential components for developing software that speaks and listens:

• ActiveX, C-DLL, COM, .NET Framework, Java, and VCL component libraries that support Microsoft® SAPI 3, SAPI 4, SAPI 5, and IBM® SMAPI speech APIs so your applications work with Dragon, IBM® ViaVoice, Microsoft® and other popular recognizers and synthesizers,
• Microsoft® SAPI 5.1 recognizer and synthesizers,
• Single developer license (deployment libraries licensed separately), and
• Plantronics® monaural microphone headset (CD-ROM version only).

Component Architecture

SpeechKit™ components provide two objects: text-to-speech session object and speech recognition session object. The text-to-speech session and speech recognition session objects provide your application a simple way to develop software that speaks and listens by handling low-level functions with speech recognition and text-to-speech engines. You only have to worry about one object for synthesizing and one object for recognizing.

Your application sets properties and invokes methods through the speech recognition session and text-to-speech session objects. These objects handle the rest. They automatically save run-time settings across application invocations.

The text-to-speech session object, ChantTTS, represents a session with a text-to-speech engine, through which speech is synthesized from text and through which wave audio files are played. Your application uses the ChantTTS object to manage the text-to-speech engine resources on behalf of the application. The ChantTTS object manages the resources and interacts directly with a text-to-speech engine application program interface (API). The ChantTTS object supports Microsoft SAPI3, SAPI4, and SAPI5 text-to-speech engine APIs. Your application receives notification of other processing states through event callbacks.

The ChantTTS object encapsulates all of the objects necessary to make the process of synthesizing speech simple for your application. It saves all of the session properties for your application in the system registry to ensure they persist across application invocations.

The speech recognition session object, ChantSR, represents a session with a speech recognition engine, through which spoken language captured live via a microphone or from recorded audio can be processed and converted to text. Your application uses the ChantSR object to manage the activities for speech recognition on behalf of your application. The ChantSR object manages the resources and interacts directly with a speech recognition engine application program interface (API). The ChantSR object supports Microsoft SAPI3, SAPI4, SAPI5, and IBM SMAPI speech recognition engine APIs. Your application receives recognized speech as text and notification of other processing states through event callbacks.

The ChantSR object encapsulates all of the objects necessary to make the process of recognizing speech simple for your application. It saves all of the session properties for your application in the system registry to ensure they persist across application invocations.

SpeechKit Editions

Chant® SpeechKit™ 4 Developer Edition provides you the component software you need to develop software that speaks and listens. The components function on your development system where the Developer Edition is licensed to run.

Developer Edition includes ActiveX, C-DLL, COM, .NET Framework, Java, and VCL component libraries that support Microsoft® SAPI 3, SAPI 4, SAPI 5, and IBM® SMAPI speech APIs so your applications work with Dragon, IBM® ViaVoice, Microsoft® and other popular recognizers and synthesizers.

Before you deploy your application, you must purchase a license for a Chant® SpeechKit™ 4 Deployment Edition that provides you the library to include with your application.

Deployment Editions are available for ActiveX, C-DLL, COM, .NET Framework, Java, and the Web. Delphi VCL developers deploy with the C-DLL component library. Web developers do not deploy a library and instead register their domain to access the component CAB files from the speechkit.com web site.

System Requirements

Chant® SpeechKit™ 4 Developer Edition system requirements are as follows:

• Intel® processor or equivalent,
• Microsoft® Windows® XP/2000/NT/Me/98,
• 32 MB RAM,
• 20 MB of hard drive space,
• CD-ROM drive,
• VGA or higher-resolution monitor,
• Windows® XP/2000/NT/Me/98,
• Sound card (Full-duplex sound card from the PC 99 list recommended),
• Microsoft® SAPI 3, SAPI 4, SAPI 5, or IBM® SMAPI recognizers and synthesizers,
• Microphone for speech recognition, and
• ActiveX, C-DLL, COM, Java, .NET Framework, VCL development environment.

Microsoft® SAPI 5 system requirements are as follows:

• Microsoft® Windows® XP/2000/NT/Me/98,
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later version.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or later for users of Windows NT 4 with any version of the service packs (download the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer),
• 14.5 MB RAM (32 MB recommended) for speech synthesis,
• 16 MB RAM (32 MB recommended) for command and control,
• 25.5 MB RAM (128 MB recommended) for dictation,
• 128 MB of hard drive space, and
• close-talk microphone for speech recognition.

Chant® SpeechKit™ 4 components support the Windows® 95 platform with Microsoft® SAPI 3 and SAPI 4 compliant recognizers and synthesizers, and SMAPI compliant recognizers. Microsoft® SAPI 5 does not support the Windows® 95 platform.