Chant Developer Workbench Features

The Chant Developer Workbench toolset provides development and testing environment for working with:

• AudioSearch
• GrammarKit
• KinesicsKit
• LexiconKit
• ProfileKit
• SpeechKit
• Speech Manager
• Talk&Listen
• VoiceMarkupKit
• VoiceXMLKit

Interactive Development Environment Chant Developer Workbench provides a comprehensive development and testing environment for working with speech and natural user interface technology that features:

• Multi-document, interactive, customizable environment
• Powerful editor with color-coded formatting, intelliprompt, optional outlining, optional line numbers, undo-redo, word wrap, and find/replace
• Resource browsers for testing
• Event tracing

The tabbed-document interface provides for fast switching among multiple documents and browsers. The editing environment is designed to accelerate speech technology grammar and markup development with built-in syntax checking and prompting. The multi-docked windows layout is configurable to yield productivity for various development and testing scenarios. Toolbars can be easily customized to display the facilities most often used. Window layout and toolbar settings are persisted across executions.

Feature Summary

Chant Developer Workbench is comprised of essential tools and class libraries for developing software that speaks, listens, and interacts with users. It provides an IDE for developing and interactively testing speech and natural user interface technologies. You can manage conversations, grammars, movement, profiles, lexicons, speech, and text-to-speech markup directly within application software you develop and deploy.

Audio Search

• Chant Audio Search enables applications to find the time offsets for specific words, phrases, and subphrases in audio recordings.
• The search terms can be a simple string or Regular Expression pattern.
• An audio recording is transcribed first from which one or more searches may be performed. Matches are returned for the entire recording as offsets in seconds.
• There are two types of audio searches supported transcription and word spotting:
  • With transcription searches, an audio recording is transcribed first. Then one or more searches may be performed with simple string or Regular Expression pattern search terms. Matches are returned as offsets in seconds.
  • With word spotting searches, the audio is word spotted with a list of keywords (i.e., single words or phrases) first. Then one or more searches may be performed to match a keyword originally used in the word spotting. Matches are returned as offsets in seconds.
• Audio Search classes libraries are available for C++, C++Builder, Delphi, Java, C#, and VB .NET Windows applications. Integration is simple and fast because a single line of code performs the search and returns offsets in the audio recording if found.

Design Grammars with GrammarKit - A GrammarKit application can:

• Compile and validate grammar syntax
• Persist compiled grammar binary

Within the Chant Developer Workbench IDE, you can:

• Create and edit grammars in native grammar syntax
• Generate word pronunciation phonemes (requires LexiconKit)
• Edit word pronunciation phonemes (requires LexiconKit)
• Compile and debug grammars
• Test grammars with live audio (requires SpeechKit)

Track Movement with KinesicsKit -A KinesicsKit application can:

• Capture and map color, depth, and body data
• Record and playback audio files
• Integrate movement tracking with speech technology

Within the Chant Developer Workbench IDE, you can:

• Render and analyze color, depth, and body data
• Validate sensor image streams

Tailor Pronunciations with LexiconKit - A LexiconKit application can:

• Create and delete lexicon word pronunciations on demand
• Edit lexicon word pronunciations for ensuring maximum recognition accuracy and speech synthesis quality

Within the Chant Developer Workbench IDE, you can:

• Create and edit W3C lexicons (.pls)
• Create and edit Cepstral lexicon file (.txt)
• Generate word pronunciation phonemes
• Edit word pronunciation phonemes
• Speak word pronunciation phonemes

Administer Speaker Profiles with ProfileKit - A ProfileKit application can:

• Create and delete speaker profiles on demand
• Launch recognizer built-in dialogs
• Customize speaker training

Within the Chant Developer Workbench IDE, you can:

• Create and delete speaker profiles
• Enumerate speaker profiles
• Invoke recognizer built-in speaker training

Speech Manager

• Chant Speech Manager enables applications to create and schedule speech processing requests. A request can specify as much or as little as needed. For example, a request can specify a speech API, engine, language, or allow Speech Manager to select based on availability.
• There are two types of speech requests supported: transcription and speech synthesis.
• With transcription requests, audio streams (i.e., buffers and files) serve as audio source for speech recognition.
• With synthesis requests, audio is generated from synthesizing speech from text and returned as buffers, file, or streamed for live playback.
• Requests are created, scheduled, and destroyed. A request is created with optional parameters that specify the details for transcription or synthesis. Once a request is created, it can be managed with various priorities.
• Speech Manager class libraries are available for C++, C++Builder, Delphi, Java (JDK 1.8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16), C#, and VB .NET (4.5+, 3.1, 5.0) Windows applications. Integration is simple and fast because three lines of code can create, schedule, and destroy a speech processing request.

Recognize and Synthesize Speech with SpeechKit - A SpeechKit application can:

• Control application functions by speaking rather than having to use a mouse or keyboard
• Prompt users for applicable data capture
• Capture data by speaking rather than typing
• Confirm data capture with spoken or audio acknowledgement
• Transcribe audio files to text
• Synthesize speech to files

Within the Chant Developer Workbench IDE, you can:

• Enumerate speech engines for testing recognizer-, and synthesizer-specific features
• Trace recognition and synthesis events
• Support grammar activation and testing
• Support TTS markup playback

Talk & Listen

• Chant Talk & Listen enables applications to synthesize and recognize speech.
• Sometimes applications need a simple way to synthesize and recognize. Chant Talk & Listen application helper enables applications to synthesize and recognize speech without having to worry about events, properties, and callback handlers.
• Talk & Listen classes libraries are available for C++, C++Builder, Delphi, Java, C#, and VB .NET Windows applications. Integration is simple and fast because a single line of code synthesize speech or request and return recognized speech.

Fine-tune Speech Synthesis with VoiceMarkupKit - A VoiceMarkupKit application can:

• Generate markup language in Acapela TTS Tag, CereProc CereVoice, Microsoft SAPI 5 XML and W3C SSML syntax
• Dynamically switch among speech APIs and syntax formats

Within the Chant Developer Workbench IDE, you can:

• Create and edit documents with TTS markup
• Generate TTS markup
• Generate word pronunciation phonemes (requires LexiconKit)
• Edit word pronunciation phonemes (requires LexiconKit)
• Playback text with TTS markup (requires SpeechKit)

Enrich Conversations with VoiceXMLKit - A VoiceXMLKit application can:

• Validate VoiceVXML syntax
• Interpret VoiceXML documents

Within the Chant Developer Workbench IDE, you can:

• Create and edit VoiceXML documents
• Test VoiceXML documents with microphone audio and keypad data
• Trace runtime events