Voice synthesis in Adobe AIR with the NativeProcess API

Grâce à la nouvelle API
Thanks to the new NativeProcess API introduced in Adobe AIR 2.0, it is now possible to interact with applications everywhere in the operating system, without any restrictions.

Creating talking apps is now possible, and that’s what the NativeSpeech class allows using /usr/bin/say binary on Mac OS, and the SAPI libraries on Windows (through a little C++ program bundled in the AIR package).

This class has two mains functions : getVoices() et say(). To retrieve their results NativeSpeechEvent events are fired. In getVoices() case, it gives a list of available voices in an Array, and with say() it notifies the end of the talking process.

Here is a little video showing NativeSpeech in action :
Click here to view the embedded video.

To launch the demo app you’ll need Adobe AIR 2.0 beta Runtime available on the Adobe Labs.

You’ll find a lot of details on the NativeProcess class on Christian Cantrell’s blog.

To get the demo application or/and NativeSpeech sources, please go to http://nativespeech.googlecode.com.