speak-ez

SpeakEZ

SpeakEZ is a lightweight TypeScript library that simplifies the use of the Web Speech API for text-to-speech functionality in web applications. It provides an easy-to-use interface for configuring speech parameters, selecting voices, and handling speech synthesis with improved sentence splitting for better results.

Features

• Simple and intuitive API for text-to-speech synthesis.
• Configurable speech parameters: volume, rate, pitch, and voice selection.
• Automatic sentence splitting for improved speech quality.
• Promise-based interface for easy integration with modern JavaScript/TypeScript applications.

Installation

You can install SpeakEZ via npm:

npm install speak-ez

Usage

Here's a basic example of how to use SpeakEZ in your project:

import SpeakEZ from 'speak-ez';

const speakWords = async (text: string) => {
	// Create an instance of SpeakEZ
	const ez = new SpeakEZ();

	// Check for browser support
	if (!ez.isSupportedBrowser) {
		console.error('Speech Synthesis is not supported in this browser.');
		return;
	}

	// Speak the provided text
	ez.speak(text);
};

speakWords('Hello world!');

API

new SpeakEZ()

Creates a new instance of SpeakEZ with optional configuration.

init(config?)

Initializes the SpeakEZ instance with the provided configuration and fetches available voices. This is not strictly necessary unless you want to set a custom voice. Individual properties can be set directly on the instance.

config Object Properties

• lang: Language code for selecting the default voice (e.g., 'en-US').
• volume: Volume level (0.0 to 1.0).
• rate: Speech rate (0.1 to 10).
• pitch: Speech pitch (0.0 to 2.0).
• voice: Selected voice for speech synthesis (string or SpeechSynthesisVoice).
• shouldSplitSentences: Boolean indicating whether to split text into sentences for better speech synthesis
• voiceLoadTimeoutInMilliseconds: Timeout in milliseconds to wait for voices to load (default: 1000).

speak(text, options?)

Speaks the provided text with optional event listeners.

text

The text to be spoken.

options Object Properties

• listeners: An object containing event listeners for speech synthesis events (start, end, error, pause, resume, mark, boundary).
• interrupt: Boolean indicating whether to interrupt ongoing speech (default: false).

pause()

Pauses the current speech synthesis.

resume()

Resumes the paused speech synthesis.

cancel()

Cancels the current speech synthesis.

Properties

• isSupportedBrowser: Boolean indicating if the browser supports Speech Synthesis.
• voices: Array of available speech synthesis voices.
• volume: Volume level (0.0 to 1.0).
• rate: Speech rate (0.1 to 10).
• pitch: Speech pitch (0.0 to 2.0).
• shouldSplitSentences: Boolean indicating whether to split text into sentences for better speech synthesis
• voice: Selected voice for speech synthesis.
• speaking: Boolean indicating if speech synthesis is currently in progress.
• pending: Boolean indicating if speech synthesis is pending.
• paused: Boolean indicating if speech synthesis is paused.

License

SpeakEZ is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more information.