A computer that talks

Let's begin with Text to Speech processing.

The basic process for getting the computer to speak is relatively easy:

• Produce the text of what you want to say
• Send the text to the Text to Speech service to generate a sound file
• Play the sound file through the computer's speaker

Note

You can also check the following links for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ViaVoice, https://console.bluemix.net/catalog/services/text-to-speech, https://console.bluemix.net/catalog/services/speech-to-text

Let's walk through this process; we'll start by getting the computer to say something such as, I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Note

Throughout this chapter, the sample applications will use the JSON library to facilitate printing out JSON structures. In addition, we use the TextToSpeechV1 and SpeechToTextV1 packages from the watson_developer_cloudSDK library. You will see these included as import statements at the beginning of the sample programs.

1. Building on what we have...