Previous Book Contents Book Index Next

Inside Macintosh: Sound /


Legacy Documentclose button

Important: Inside Macintosh: Sound is deprecated as of Mac OS X v10.5. For new audio development in Mac OS X, use Core Audio. See the Audio page in the ADC Reference Library.

Chapter 4 - Speech Manager

This chapter describes the Speech Manager, the part of the Macintosh system software that provides a standardized method for Macintosh applications to generate synthesized speech.

You need to read this chapter if you want your application to be able to generate speech. For example, you may want your application to incorporate the capability to speak its dialog box messages to the user. A word-processing application might use the Speech Manager to implement a command that speaks a selected section of a document to the user. A multimedia application might use the Speech Manager to provide a narration of a QuickTime movie instead of including sampled-sound data on a movie track. Because sound samples can take up large amounts of room on disk, using text in place of sampled sound is extremely efficient.

If you are developing an application that needs only to generate speech from strings, then the information on speech contained in the chapter "Introduction to Sound on the Macintosh" in this book might be sufficient. If, however, you need to be able to manipulate the speech output or customize it to make it easier for your users to understand, you should read this chapter.

The Speech Manager is not available in all system software versions. It was introduced with the Macintosh computers with audio visual capabilities in the summer of 1993. It will continue to be incorporated into future versions of system software. You should use the Gestalt function to ensure that the speech services you need are available before calling them. See the discussion in the section "Checking for Speech Manager Capabilities" beginning on page 4-12 for details.

The Speech Manager and the Sound Manager adopt many of the same metaphors in the processes of sound production and speech generation. You should be aware that the Speech Manager's approach often differs in subtle but important ways from that of the Sound Manager. Reading the chapter "Sound Manager" in this book might help you to learn to use the Speech Manager, but it is not required.

Also, while the Speech Manager uses the Sound Manager, your application should not attempt to directly access any Sound Manager data structures used by the Speech Manager. Because the Speech Manager is likely to be a rapidly evolving portion of system software, relying on Speech Manager data structures not explicitly documented in this chapter is likely to pose compatibility problems for your application.

This chapter begins with an introduction to the speech generation process and then discusses how you can


Chapter Contents
About the Speech Manager
Voices
Speech Attributes
Speech Channels
Callback Routines
Using the Speech Manager
Checking for Speech Manager Capabilities
Creating, Using, and Disposing of a Speech Channel
Working With Different Voices
Adjusting Speech Attributes
Pausing Speech
Implementing Callback Procedures
Writing Embedded Speech Commands
Embedded Command Delimiters
Syntax of Embedded Speech Commands
Examples of Embedded Speech Commands
Phonemic Representation of Speech
Phonemic Symbols
Prosodic Control Symbols
Including Pronunciation Dictionaries
Speech Manager Reference
Constants
Speech Information Selectors
Data Structures
Voice Specification Records
Voice Description Records
Voice File Information Records
Speech Status Information Records
Speech Error Information Records
Speech Version Information Records
Phoneme Information Records
Phoneme Descriptor Records
Speech Extension Data Records
Delimiter Information Records
Speech Manager Routines
Starting, Stopping, and Pausing Speech
Obtaining Information About Voices
Managing Speech Channels
Obtaining Information About Speech
Changing Speech Attributes
Converting Text To Phonemes
Installing a Pronunciation Dictionary
Application-Defined Routines
Text-Done Callback Procedure
Speech-Done Callback Procedure
Synchronization Callback Procedure
Error Callback Procedure
Phoneme Callback Procedure
Word Callback Procedure
Resources
The Pronunciation Dictionary Resource
Summary of the Speech Manager
Pascal Summary
Constants
Data Structures
Speech Manager Routines
Application-Defined Routines
C Summary
Constants
Data Types
Speech Manager Routines
Application-Defined Routines
Assembly-Language Information
Data Structures
Trap Macros
Result Codes

Previous Book Contents Book Index Next

© Apple Computer, Inc.
2 JUL 1996