Why voice? Business communication is mostly about paperless paperwork, right? Computer workers like you and I stare intently at the computer screen for long hours, and by the end of the day are ready to kill the computer.

“A picture is better than a thousand words” applies only when it is not a picture of a thousand words that we read on our computer screens every day. Voice components bring some relief to our eyes and allow us to listen to text pages and even to talk back. (We talk more about speech recognition systems in Chapter 12.)

This chapter is about integration with voice components based on free, downloadable Java libraries. Voice components make even more sense in devices with small screens, or no screens at all.

The news watch is an example in which the voice component would be highly appreciated. Imagine a talking watch that delivers the news. Someone could use the screen option in a crowded place and the voice option in a better environment—for example, outdoors.

We add a voice component to the news watch at the end of this chapter. Right now, we take a closer look at synthesis technology.

WHAT IS THE BASE FOR CREATING A VOICE COMPONENT?

The free text-to-speech (FreeTTS) library was built by the Speech Integration Group of Sun Microsystems Laboratories as the first, though not complete, implementation of the Java speech application program interface (JSAPI) [1].