Data processing: speech signal processing – linguistics – language – Speech signal processing – Synthesis
Reexamination Certificate
2000-10-04
2004-06-08
To, Doris H. (Department: 2655)
Data processing: speech signal processing, linguistics, language
Speech signal processing
Synthesis
C704S276000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06748358
ABSTRACT:
CROSS REFERENCE TO THE RELATED APPLICATION
The subject application is related to subject matter disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application No.Heill-284731 filed in Oct. 5, 1999 in Japan, to which the subject application claims priority under the Paris Convention and which is incorporated by reference herein.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to an improved electronic speaking document viewer, an authoring system for creating and editing electronic contents to be reproduced by the electronic speaking document viewer, a semiconductor storage card and an information provider server. The electronic speaking document viewer serves to convert text to speech sounds in accordance with the text data as contained in a semiconductor storage card inserted to the electronic speaking document viewer.
2. Prior Art
The text culture has been supported by printed matters on paper to be viewed with naked eyes for long years. However, there have come electronic document viewers such as the e-BOOK (commercial name) broadly distributed in U.S.A.
The electronic document viewer of this kind serves to simply provide typographic images on a character display of the electronic document viewer. The typographic images are reproduced from a storage medium such as the memory space of the electronic document viewer or an external portable storage in which text data is stored in the form of character codes or typographic graphic images.
On the other hand, there are practical applications for providing speech from an electronic book package in the form of storage mediums such as cassette tapes, compact discs and so forth through an appropriate electronic speaking device.
However, in the case of the exemplary prior art technique as explained above, there are following shortcomings as described below.
(1) It is inevitable to cause the user's inconvenience and discomfort when he continues reading through an electronic document viewer for a long time because the typographic images as reproduced on the character display of the electronic document viewer is substantially poorer as compared with letters printed on paper, causing eyestrain, and can not be readily used in his life. In some cases, clear text images printed on paper are directly digitized as still image data for the purpose of increasing the resolution. In this case, however, there are shortcomings that the readily use of the electronic document viewer becomes furthermore difficult and can not be easily put into practice since the resolution of the character display and the available memory space have to be increased.
(2) The field of the electronic book packages is recognized as belonging to another category, such as radio plays, different than the text culture in which are read letters printed on paper, and therefore the electronic book packages are not such as competing with or replacing the text culture based upon printed matters on paper. On the other hand, if raw speech is stored in a storage medium, the data size as required is significantly increased as greatly larger than the data size of the corresponding text data. Because of this, the amount of information available in the form of raw speech data is significantly limited as compared with the amount of information given form text images printed on paper so that it seems not practicable as considered from the text culture allowing the readily use of books.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In brief, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved electronic speaking document viewer accommodating a semiconductor storage card in the form of a detachable card type storage medium in which text data consisting of letters and intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data, said electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a text data display unit for displaying the text data consisting of letters stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a speech synthesis unit for performing speech synthesis on the basis of the intermediate language data stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a synthesized speech outputting unit for outputting the synthesized speech as synthesized by means of said speech synthesis unit; and
a control unit for synchronizing said text data display unit and said synthesized speech outputting unit with each other.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said text data comprises image data and said intermediate language data is generated from typographic data contained in said text data to indicate the rules of how to phonetically read the typographic data.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that the phonogramic data of said intermediate language data consists of katakana character strings.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that said intermediate language data includes synchronization codes for synchronizing said text data display unit and said synthesized speech outputting unit with each other; and wherein said control unit serves to synchronize said text data display unit and said synthesized speech outputting unit with each other on the basis of the synchronization codes.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved electronic speaking document viewer accommodating a semiconductor storage card in the form of a detachable card type storage medium in which unencrypted text data consisting of letters and encrypted intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data, said electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a text data display unit for displaying the text data consisting of letters stored in said semiconductor storage card;
a decryption unit for decrypting the encrypted intermediate language data contained in said semiconductor storage card;
a speech synthesis unit for performing speech synthesis on the basis of the intermediate language data as decrypted by means of said decryption unit; and
a synthesized speech outputting unit for outputting the synthesized speech as synthesized by means of said speech synthesis unit.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects and advantages of the present invention are provided by a new and improved electronic speaking document viewer accommodating a semiconductor storage card in the form of a detachable card type storage medium in which encrypted text data consisting of letters and encrypted intermediate language data indicative of the rules of how to phonetically read said text data, said electronic speaking document viewer comprising:
a decryption unit for decrypting the encrypted text data and the encrypted intermediate language data contained in said semiconductor storage card;
a text data display unit for displaying the text data consisting of letters stored in said semiconductor storage card and decrypted by means of said decryption unit;
a speech synthesis unit for performing speech synthesis on the basis of the intermediate language data as decrypted by means of said decryption unit; and
a synthesized speech outputting unit for outputting the synthesized speech as synthesized by means of said speech synthesis unit.
In a preferred embodiment, further improvement resides in that signals indicative of forwarding and rewinding are detected; wherein when the signal indicative of forwarding is detected during the period in which said electronic speaking document viewer is outputting the synthesized speech, the sentence to be reproduced with synthesized speech is determined in accordance with the repeat count of the forwarding signal in order to forward to the top of a sentence after the current sentence and to perform the speech synthesis; and wherein when the signal indicative of rewinding is detected during the period in which said electronic speaking document viewer is outputting the synthesized speech
Akamine Masami
Iwasaki Hiroshi
Yamazaki Yoshihiro
Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner L.L.P.
Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
Opsasnick Michael N.
To Doris H.
LandOfFree
ELECTRONIC SPEAKING DOCUMENT VIEWER, AUTHORING SYSTEM FOR... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with ELECTRONIC SPEAKING DOCUMENT VIEWER, AUTHORING SYSTEM FOR..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and ELECTRONIC SPEAKING DOCUMENT VIEWER, AUTHORING SYSTEM FOR... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3365088