JP2003203039A - E-mail receiving transmitting and receiving system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an e-mail transmitting and receiving system capable of forming an e-mail friendly to or giving an impact to a receiver without deteriorating the quality of a document. <P>SOLUTION: This system comprises a means 11 for storing a received e-mail; a display means 12; a voice composing output means 13 for converting the data constituting the e-mail to voice and outputting it to a speaker 14; and a control means 10. The control means 10 judges the identification information of the e-mail stored in the storage means 11 and performs a control to transmit the data constituting the e-mail instructed by the identification information to the voice composing output means 13 and display the data other than it on the display means 13. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an electronic mail transmitting / receiving system having at least a voice reading function for reading a mail text.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art At present, the electronic mail function is widely used in various communication terminals such as mobile phones and ordinary phones in addition to conventional personal computers.

Further, this type of device (generally referred to as a terminal) is provided with a function of not only displaying the received mail text, header, etc. on the display section but also reading out the received mail contents by voice. There is.

Further, in a device having such a voice reading function, a function for reading only a portion designated by predetermined identification information (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-251373) or a reply mail is attached. A function for excluding non-content characters such as quotation marks (for example, ">") that are not directly related to the content from being read out (for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No.
No. 1-85458) is proposed.

[0005]

However, this kind of conventional reading-out function is intended to read a part or all of the visible information such as the text of the mail displayed on the display of the terminal of the mail recipient. is there.

That is, the voice reading target is a content created based on the sentence style only, and is not a colloquial style suitable for reading.

[0007] Therefore, when reading aloud, the mail recipient feels a little strange, and the mail sending side effectively uses the voice reading aloud to create an impactful mail. I had to consider the expressions.

[0008] For example, in an e-mail for a bargain advertisement, a bargain event and its highlight product are described in the e-mail text, but it is necessary to persuade how to bargain for attracting customers. It is difficult to use a sentence in a literary style to give an explanation that has sufficient impact to arouse the user's willingness to purchase, and when the sentence is created in colloquial style and read aloud, it has sufficient impact. Although it can be given, if the text itself is displayed as a part of the mail text, there is a fear that the mail text has a literary style and a colloquial style, which deteriorates the overall quality of the mail text.

[0009]

In view of the above problems, the present invention has an easy-to-read writing style for the mail contents displayed on the receiving side, and a spoken style in which the text read aloud has an impact over the writing style. It is intended to provide an e-mail transmission / reception system capable of composing an e-mail. It is to be displayed.

[0010]

1 is a schematic diagram schematically showing an electronic mail transmission / reception network to which the present invention can be applied.

[0011] Normally, as a form of connecting a terminal having an electronic mail function such as a personal computer PC, a telephone TEL, a facsimile FAX and a mobile phone to the Internet 1, a communication business called a service provider SP via a public line 2 A dial-up connection is made to a user's server (hereinafter, SP server) 3, and the Internet 1 is connected via this SP server 3 and a gateway GW, and a terminal such as a personal computer PC is connected to a LAN in advance, and this LAN is used as a gateway. There is a mode in which it is performed by connecting to the Internet 1 via the GW, and transmission / reception of electronic mail between the terminals is performed via the Internet 1, public line 2 or the like.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a main part when the present invention is applied to the above terminal.

The control unit 10 is composed of, for example, a microcomputer, and controls each unit described below according to a control program stored in advance. The received mail storage unit 11 is composed of, for example, a semiconductor random access memory, and stores an electronic mail received by a receiving means (not shown) as text data. The display unit 12 is a well-known liquid crystal,
It has a display device such as a CRT and displays the text data visually under the control of the control unit 10.

Under the control of the control unit 10, the text-to-speech synthesis output unit 13 adds a reading to each Kanji character when the Kanji character exists in the text data, and the syntactic structure of a sentence composed of the text data. Is output, and accent information is further added based on the analysis result. Then, a synthetic sound corresponding to the text data is output from the speaker 14 while performing prosodic control based on the reading and accent information added to the text data. To do.

Next, the control operation of the control unit 10 will be described.

The control unit 10 reads the mail data in text format stored in the received mail storage unit 11 according to a received mail display instruction from an input unit (not shown).

FIG. 3 shows an example of the mail. This mail is composed of a header including a sender, an addressee, and a subject, and a body. Further, in the body, a sentence which is a voice reading target but not a display target is identified by the identification information [GUI.
It is sandwiched by D].

The control unit 10 that has read out such mail data includes the identification information [GUI
The text data sandwiched by D] is extracted and sent to the text-to-speech output unit 13, and the other data is sent to the display unit 12.

As a result, in the received mail shown in FIG. 3, the text data sandwiched by the identification information [GUID] in the text is converted into synthetic sound by the text-to-speech synthesis output unit 13 and output from the speaker 14. , Other body data and header data are displayed on the display unit 12. It should be noted that the identification information [GU
ID] itself is not a display target.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, since the sentence to be read aloud but not the subject to be displayed can be described in colloquial style separately from the subject data to be displayed, the recipient is familiar with the sentence. It is easy or has an impact, and the displayed mail text is easy to read.

In this embodiment, the identification information [GUID]
Although the configuration in which the text data sandwiched by is hidden is described, the terminal may have a function of selecting whether or not to display the text data on the mail recipient side. As a result, it is possible to visually confirm the text data output as voice.

Further, when printing out the received mail, the text data sandwiched by the identification information [GUID] is to be printed together with the header data and other body data, which is considered to be saved on paper. Is preferable.

Further, when the identification information indicating the non-display data is displayed or printed, or in the terminal having no function of recognizing the identification information [GUID], the identification information [G
When the UID] and the text data sandwiched by the UID] are also displayed, the meaning of the identification information [GUID] is unknown to a user who does not know the function as in the present embodiment, which causes confusion when reading a mail. Sometimes. In order to solve this, for example, a comment such as “This information means that the information is not displayed on the corresponding model and is output by voice.” May be added to the identification information [GUID].

[0024]

According to the present invention, a sentence read aloud can be hidden. Therefore, even if the sentence is used as a colloquial style, the quality of the displayed document can be reduced.
In addition, the email can be familiar to the recipient or can have an impact.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram schematically showing an electronic mail transmission / reception network to which the present invention can be applied.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a main part of a terminal to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram for explaining an electronic mail.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 Control unit 11 Received mail storage 12 Display 13 Text-to-speech output section 14 speakers

   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued front page    (72) Inventor Takemura Motoki             3-201 Minamiyoshikata, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture Tottori             Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. An electronic mail transmission / reception system, wherein a sentence designated by identification information in an electronic mail is a voice reading target and a non-display target. 2. An electronic mail transmission / reception system in which the text instructed by the identification information in the electronic mail is a voice reading target and a non-display target, and the text instructed by the identification information in the received mail is not displayed. An electronic mail transmission / reception system, characterized in that the electronic mail transmission / reception system is provided with means for instructing cancellation. 3. An electronic mail transmission / reception system in which a text instructed by identification information in an electronic mail is a voice reading target and a non-display target, and means for storing the received electronic mail, display means, and electronic means. A voice synthesis output means for converting the data forming the mail into a voice and outputting the voice to a speaker, and a control means for controlling each of the means are provided, and the control means is for controlling the contents of the email stored in the storage means. It is characterized in that the identification information is discriminated, the data composing the electronic mail designated by the identification information is sent to the voice synthesis output means, and the other data is displayed on the display means. E-mail sending and receiving system. 4. The electronic mail transmission / reception system according to claim 3, further comprising means for instructing display on the display means of data constituting the electronic mail instructed by the identification information. E-mail sending and receiving system. 5. An electronic mail transmission / reception system, wherein commentary of the identification information is added to the identification information according to any one of claims 1 to 4.