JSAPI 1.0 Setup

FreeTTS provides some level support for the Java Speech API v1.0 (JSAPI). In particular, since FreeTTS is a speech synthesis system, none of the JSAPI 1.0 Recognition interfaces are supported. In addition, FreeTTS supports only a subset of the JSAPI 1.0 javax.speech.synthesis specification. The FreeTTS support for JSAPI 1.0 has the following restrictions:

• JSML Speech Markup is ignored. FreeTTS will process JSML, but currently does not apply the markup to the generated speech.
• FreeTTS does not currently generate the WORD_STARTED or the MARKER_REACHED events.
• Vocabulary management is not supported.
• The Synthesizer.phoneme() method is not implemented.
• PropertyVeto exceptions are not always properly thrown when property change requests are rejected or constrained.

Note that the JSAPI specification is undergoing changes. The official work being done on JSAPI is now for JSAPI 2.0 via the Java Community Process (JCP) under JSR-113. Read more about the JCP and JSR-113 at http://www.jcp.org.

Set Up Your JSAPI Environment

The sources to the JSAPI 1.0 specification implementation (i.e., the javax.speech.* classes) are not available under a BSD-style license. Instead, we make the JSAPI binary available under a separate binary code license (BCL).

Obtaining the JSAPI binary is as simple as unpacking the jsapi.jar file in the lib directory:

• UNIX Systems

  • Go to the lib directory.
  • Type chmod +x ./jsapi.sh.
  • Type sh ./jsapi.sh and view the BCL.
  • If the BCL is acceptable, accept it by typing "y". The jsapi.jar file will be unpacked and deposited into the lib directory.

• Windows Systems

  • Go to the lib directory.
  • Type .\jsapi.exe and view the BCL.
  • If the BCL is acceptable, accept it by typing "y". The jsapi.jar file will be unpacked and deposited into the lib directory.

Copy speech.properties

You will also need to copy the speech.properties file to your home directory before running he demos that use JSAPI. If you are not sure where to copy this file, try running one of the JSAPI demos. If the demo cannot find the speech.properties file, it will tell you where you should put it.

NOTE: if you want to avoid the need for using the speech.properties file with any applications you create, you can subvert the JSAPI specification by obtaining the FreeTTS JSAPI synthesizer directly rather than using the recommended and standard way (i.e., java.speech.Central). See the code in the WebStartClock demo for an example of how to do this.