Text-to-Speech Dictionary Application Overview

Description

This web page provides an overview of a Python-based dictionary application that features text-to-speech functionality. The application allows users to enter a word, search for its definition, and hear the pronunciation through computer speech output.

How It Works

The application uses several libraries to create a GUI, fetch definitions from a dictionary API, and convert text to speech:

• PySimpleGUI: Used to build the graphical user interface where users can interact with the application.
• gTTS (Google Text-to-Speech): A library that converts the text definition into speech.
• requests: This library is used to send HTTP requests to a dictionary API to fetch the definition of the entered word.
• io: Provides tools for working with streams (like in-memory files), which is used here to hold the audio data from gTTS.
• pygame: Used for playing the audio file generated by gTTS.

Application Flow

1. User enters a word into the input field and clicks the 'Search' button.
2. An HTTP GET request is made to the dictionary API using the requests library to retrieve the definition.
3. If found, the definition is displayed in the GUI, and gTTS synthesizes the speech from the definition text.
4. The speech is played back to the user using pygame's mixer module.

Code Snippet

    # Fetch and display definition
    if event == 'Search':
        word = values['WORD']
        response = requests.get(f"https://api.dictionaryapi.dev/api/v2/entries/en/{word}")
        ...
    
    # Convert definition to speech and play
    tts = gTTS(text=definitions, lang='en')
    ...
    pygame.mixer.music.play()
        

Requirements

To run this application, ensure that you have installed the following Python libraries:

• PySimpleGUI
• gTTS
• requests
• pygame

These can be installed using pip:

pip install PySimpleGUI gTTS requests pygame