Subject: AT&T Natural Voices�
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Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 14:38:17 -0600

AT&T Natural Voicesä

Text-To-Speech Engines

System Developer’s Guide

Server, Server-Lite, and Desktop Editions

US English, Latin American Spanish, UK English, German, and French

Release 1.4

Ó2001, 2002 by AT&T, All rights reserved.  Natural Voices is a registered trademark of AT&T Corporation. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.  Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows, Visual Basic, and Visual C++ are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.  Pentium is a trademark of Intel Corporation. Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Sun Microsystems Solaris is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sparc is a registered trademark of Sparc International, Inc. Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation.

Printed in the United States of America.

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Contents

About this Guide............................................................................................................................................................ vii

1     Introduction. 7

1.1.      AT&T Natural Voices Text-To-Speech. 7

1.2      The Text-to-Speech Synthesis Problem..

1.3      Release 1.4 Features.

1.4      System Components and Features.

1.5      Supported Languages.

1.6      This Guide.

1.7      Other Sources of Information.

2     Installation.

2.1      Installing the AT&T Natural Voices TTS Software.

2.2      Disk Requirements.

2.3      Memory Requirements.

2.4      Installing AT&T Natural Voices TTS Engines on Microsoft Windows.

2.5      Installing the AT&T Natural Voices TTS Software on UNIX Machines.

2.5.1       Installing the AT&T Natural Voices Server-Lite and Desktop Editions.

2.5.2       Installing the Server Edition TTS Server on UNIX Servers.

2.5.3       Installing the Server Edition TTS Client on UNIX Machines.

3     Using the TTS Server Engines.

3.1      Server Command Line Arguments.

3.2      Running the TTS Server as a Microsoft Service.

3.2.1       Installing the ATT_TTSService Service.

3.2.2       Running the ATT_TTSService service.

3.2.3       Uninstalling the ATT_TTSService.

3.2.4       Modifying the ATT_TTSService Parameters.

3.3      Supporting Multiple Voices and Languages.

3.4      Running the Client

3.4.1       Microsoft Windows SAPI 4.0 TTSApp.

3.4.2       Microsoft Windows SAPI 5.1 TTSApp.

3.4.3       Command Line TTS Clients.

3.5      Server Output and Error Messages.

3.5.1       Initialization Messages.

3.5.2       Shutdown Messages.

3.5.3       Voice Inventory Messages.

3.5.4       Client Messages.

3.6      SNMP.

3.6.1       Configuring SNMP on Windows NT/2000/XP.

3.6.2       Verifying that the Microsoft SNMP Service is installed.

3.6.3       Configuring SNMP on Unix systems.

3.6.4       Configuring the snmpd.conf configuration file.

3.6.5       TTS MIB files.

3.7      Using the Server Edition with Nuance.

4     Running the Server-Lite and Desktop Edition.

4.1      Microsoft Windows SAPI 4.0 TTSApp.

4.2      Microsoft Windows SAPI 5.1 TTSApp.

4.3      Command Line TTS Applications.

5     Client C++ SDK..

5.1      Getting Started.

5.1.1       SDK Headers.

5.1.2       Compiler Definitions.

5.1.3       SDK Libraries.

5.2      Programming Conventions.

5.2.1       Return Codes.

5.2.2       CTTSRefCntObject

5.2.3       UTF-8 Strings.

5.2.4       C++ Standard Template Library.

5.3      Creating An Engine.

5.3.1       Build A Configuration Structure.

5.3.2       Creating an Engine.

5.3.3       Creating an Engine for the Server Edition.

5.3.4       Creating an Engine for the Server-Lite and Desktop Editions.

5.4      Receiving Engine Notifications And Messages.

5.4.1       CTTSSink Notifications.

5.4.2       CTTSNotification Object

5.4.3       TTSWordNotification structure.

5.4.4       TTSPhonemeNotification structure.

5.4.5       CTTSErrorInfoObject

5.5      Initializing And Shutting Down The Engine.

5.6      Setting The Voice.

5.6.1       TTSVoice Structure.

5.6.2       Enumerating The Voices.

5.6.3       Setting The Voice.

5.7      Setting The Audio Format

5.7.1       TTSAudioFormat Structure.

5.7.2       Enumerating The Audio Formats.

5.7.3       Setting the Audio Format

5.8      Speaking Text

5.8.1       Speaking Text

5.8.2       Speaking CTTSTextFragment objects.

5.9      Setting Volume and Rate.

5.10     Stopping The Engine.

5.11     Retrieving Phonetic Transcriptions.

5.12     Custom Dictionaries.

5.12.1      Creating a Dictionary.

5.12.2      Updating a Dictionary.

5.12.3      Clearing and Deleting a Dictionary.

5.12.4      Changing Search Order

5.13     Optional Operating System Specific Classes.

5.13.1      CTTSWin32AudioPlayer

5.13.2      CTTSWin32AudioWriter

5.13.3      CTTSUnixAudioPlayer

5.13.4      CTTSUnixAudioWriter

5.14     Changes from AT&T Natural Voices 1.0 Release.

5.14.1      New Engine Models.

5.14.2      Library names have changed.

6     Java Speech API Implementation.

6.1      Requirements.

6.2      Installation.

6.3      Compiling the Examples.

6.4      Running the Examples.

6.5      Using AT&T Natural Voices JSAPI Implementation.

6.6      Available Synthesizer Voices.

6.7      Available Synthesizer Modes.

6.8      Differences Between the JSAPI Specification and the AT&T Implementation.

6.8.1       Audio.

6.8.2       Vocabulary.

6.8.3       Queuing.

6.8.4       XML.

6.8.5       Voices.

6.8.6       Synthesizer

6.8.7       Engine.

6.8.8       Permissions.

7     SAPI 4 Text Markup.

7.1      Com..

7.2      Ctx.

7.2.1       Address Context

7.2.2       Document Context

7.2.3       Email Context

7.2.4       Numbers Context

7.2.5       Unknown Context

7.2.6       Normal Context

7.3      Mrk.

7.4      Pau.

7.5      Prn.

7.6      RmS.

7.7      RmW...

7.8      RSpd.

7.9      Rst

7.10     Spd.

7.11     Vce.

7.12     Vol

8     Microsoft SAPI 5.1 Control Tags.

8.1      ATT_Div.

8.2      ATT_Ignore_case.

8.3      Bookmark.

8.4      Context

8.4.1       Address Context

8.4.2       Address_postal Context

8.4.3       ATT_Literal Context

8.4.4       ATT_Math Context

8.4.5       ATT_Measurement Context

8.4.6       Currency Context

8.4.7       Date_MD Context

8.4.8       Date_MDY Context

8.4.9       Date_Year Context

8.4.10      Number_Cardinal Context

8.4.11      Number_Decimal Context

8.4.12      Number_Fraction Context

8.4.13      Phone_Number Context

8.4.14      Time Context

8.4.15      Web Context

8.4.16      Web_url Context

8.4.17      Email Context

8.4.18      Email_address Context

8.5      Pron.

8.6      Rate.

8.7      Silence.

8.8      Spell

8.9      Voice.

8.10     Volume.

9     SSML Control Tags.

9.1      ATT_Ignore_Case.

9.2      Break.

9.3      Mark.

9.4      Paragraph.

9.5      Phoneme.

9.6      Prosody.

9.6.1       Rate.

9.6.2       Volume.

9.7      Say-As.

9.7.1       Acronym..

9.7.2       Address.

9.7.3       ATT_Literal

9.7.4       ATT_Math.

9.7.5       ATT_Measurement

9.7.6       Currency.

9.7.7       Date.

9.7.8       Name.

9.7.9       Net

9.7.10      Number

9.7.11      Sub.

9.7.12      Telephone.

9.7.13      Time.

9.8      Sentence.

9.9      Speak.

9.10     Voice.

10       JSML Control Tags.

10.1     jsml

10.2     div.

10.3     voice.

10.4     sayas.

10.4.1      literal

10.4.2      date.

10.4.3      time.

10.4.4      name.

10.4.5      phone.

10.4.6      net

10.4.7      address.

10.4.8      currency.

10.4.9      measure.

10.4.10        number

10.5     phoneme.

10.6     break.

10.7     prosody.

10.7.1      rate.

10.7.2      volume.

10.8     marker

10.9     engine.

11       Custom Dictionaries.

11.1     Defining Custom Pronunciations.

11.2     Using the Win32 WinDictEdit Tool

11.2.1      Defining Replacements.

11.2.2      Changing the default pronunciation of a word.

11.3     Adding Custom Pronunciations to Your Application.

12       Performance Guidelines.

12.1     TTS Memory Requirements.

12.2     Definitions.

12.3     Performance Results.

12.4     Recommendations.

Appendix A: Phonetic Alphabets.

A.1. IPA Phonetic Alphabets.

A.1.1 US English SAPI 4/IPA Phonetic Alphabet

A.1.2. Spanish SAPI 4/IPA Phonetic Alphabet

A.1.3. German SAPI 4/IPA Phonetic Alphabet

A.1.4 French SAPI 4/IPA Phonetic Alphabet

A.1.5 UK English SAPI 4/IPA Phonetic Alphabet

A.2.1 The SAPI 5 and DARPA US English Phonetic Alphabets.

A.2.2. SAPI 5 SAMPA Spanish Phonetic Alphabet

A.2.3. SAPI 5 SAMPA German Phonetic Alphabet

A.2.4. SAPI 5 SAMPA French Phonetic Alphabet

A.2.5. SAPI 5 SAMPA UK English Phonetic Alphabet

Appendix B: SAPI 5.1 Compliance.

B.1. Support for SAPI 5.1.

1       Introduction

1.1.           AT&T Natural Voices Text-To-Speech

AT&T Natural Voices Text-to-Speech (TTS) Engines provide synthesis services in multiple languages for application builders creating desktop applications. The application requests services from the TTS engine using either a Microsoft SAPI 4 COM object, SAPI 5.1 COM object, a Java program,  or using a convenient set of C++ APIs that are included with the product. High-quality male and female voices are included in 8 KHz µlaw and CCITT G.711 alaw for telephony applications. Additional voices and higher quality 16 KHz voices are available for non-telephony applications.  The AT&T Natural Voices TTS product is currently available in three configurations: the Server Edition, the Server-Lite Edition, and the Desktop Edition. The Server Edition provides a scalable, client/server architecture that’s ideal for supporting many simultaneous client connections to a single server or a large server farm of TTS servers.  The Server-Lite Edition offers the same TTS technology, but on a single server where both the application and the TTS run on a single computer making the Server-Lite Edition ideal for small office applications requiring fewer than about 10 simultaneous TTS channels[1].  The Desktop Edition provides the same AT&T Natural Voices TTS technology on a desktop computer but limits the TTS engine to a single channel.   All three configurations are intended for application developers to use to build TTS-enabled applications, either for scalable applications using the Server Edition, small to mid-sized applications using the Server-Lite Edition, or end user desktop applications using the Desktop Edition.

The following table shows the differences between the three editions of the AT&T Natural Voices product.

Feature/Requirement

Server

Server-Lite

Desktop

Architecture

Client/Server

Single computer

Single computer

Scalability

(simultaneous channels)

Unlimited channels across multiple TTS servers

Several channels on one server

Single channel

Design goals

Large channel capacity

Single computer with smaller memory requirements

Single computer with smaller memory requirements

Recommended  Memory

512 MB

(256 Minimum)

256 MB

(128 Minimum)

256 MB

(128 Minimum)

Minimum CPU

500 MHz PIII

300 MHz PIII

300 MHz III

Disk Space

500 MB

500 MB

500 MB

Platforms

§         Windows NT, 2000, XP

§         Windows 98, ME

§         Linux 6.1, 6.2, 7.2

§         Solaris/SPARC 2.7, 2.8

§         HPUX 11.0

§         AIX 4.3

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Client only

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SNMP Support

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Multi-Lingual

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Voice Fonts

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Development SDK and redistributable TTS engine

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SAPI 4.0

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SAPI 5.0 & 5.1[2]

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SSML

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JSML

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Custom dictionaries; Word and sentence notifications; user-defined bookmarks

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This document describes the AT&T Natural Voices Text-To-Speech Development SDK which application developers use to create TTS-enabled applications using US English, German, and Latin American Spanish, UK English, and French voices both for large capacity and desktop environments.  The SDK is the same for all three editions, the only code difference being in creating the engine.

[1] The actual number of channels you may be able to support with the Server-Lite Edition depends upon the other applications that share the computer’s processing power and memory.  Text To Speech Synthesis tends to be memory intensive rather than CPU intensive so adding physical memory may allow you to run additional channels.

[2] SAPI 5.0 does not support Spanish.  You must upgrade to SAPI 5.1 to use the multi-lingual features of the AT&T Natural Voices TTS 1.4 Release.