KR20090058360A - Method, system and computer-readable recording medium for extracting text from web page, converting same text into audio data file, and providing resultant audio data file - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for extracting text from a web page and converting the text into a voice data file to provide the file, a system, and a computer readable recording medium are provided to remarkably increase a reuse rate without causing a capacity problem of a user terminal device, thereby easily reusing a generated voice data file or sharing the file with a third party. A text recognizer(230) recognizes text extracted from a terminal device. A text-speech converter(240) converts the extracted text into a voice. A voice data file generator(250) compresses the converted voice to generate a voice data file. A communication unit(260) transmits an identifier indicative of a location of the compressed voice data file to the terminal device. A database stores the compressed voice data file. The converted voice is stored in WAV type. The compressed voice data file is an MP3 file. The identifier indicative of the location of the compressed voice data file is a URL(Uniform Resource Locator).

Description

TECHNICAL, SYSTEM AND COMPUTER-READABLE RECORDING MEDIUM FOR EXTRACTING TEXT FROM WEB PAGE, CONVERTING SAME TEXT INTO AUDIO DATA FILE , AND PROVIDING RESULTANT AUDIO DATA FILE}

The present invention relates to a method, a system, and a computer-readable recording medium for extracting text on a web page from a user terminal device, and converting the text into a voice data file. A method, a system, and a computer-readable recording medium for converting and providing a file to enable a user to efficiently reuse the file.

In recent years, as the use of the Internet is becoming more common, various types of information can be obtained through the Internet. Companies that provide Internet services through Web sites provide various kinds of services to meet the needs of more and more diverse Internet users, and the types of such services are also increasing day by day.

Users are exposed to the services provided by these companies in various forms, and in particular, they want to obtain various Internet contents such as news information, dictionary information, professional information, local information, and shopping information through web sites.

These users search through a web site to get the content they want, and when they get the content they want from a particular web page (or web document), it's usually easier to decipher the content, which is mostly text. It is common. However, from the user's point of view, using only text-based content may be unpleasant in the multimedia era, and in reality, as the amount of information contained in a web page increases, the user is provided in the form of text. There is also a problem in that the user must not take his / her eyes away from the display means such as the monitor of the user terminal device until all the text is read with the naked eye in order to decrypt the content. In addition, some users may have a multitasking desire to perform other tasks while obtaining desired information through the contents. In the case of using only the contents provided mainly on the text, such desires may not be satisfied.

Recently, computer telephony integration (CTI) technologies such as voice over IP (VoIP) technology, voice recognition technology, voice conversion technology, voice synthesis technology, and answering machine have attracted much attention. According to the Internet environment, the user is expected to be able to provide an advanced service in which voices are instructed, voices are provided with information, and voices are communicated.

Accordingly, text-to-speech (TTS) technology has been developed to solve the problem of providing text-oriented content, and to widely use the CTI technology. Text-to-speech technology is a technology that can be used more widely than speech recognition technology, and is a human interface technology that converts and provides various text information into speech. Text-to-speech technology in web pages is mainly realized by extracting the text on the web page, converting it to speech, and presenting it to the user. For example, when a user stops the mouse at a certain position on a web page for a predetermined time, the text corresponding to the position of the mouse pointer is extracted after the mouse-over event occurs. Alternatively, it may refer to a case in which a user drags a portion of text on a web page and converts it to a voice.

From time to time, users may need to repeatedly play or save voice data files converted from text (especially if the text is educational text or other text that needs to be remembered). When the voice data file is generated and played back or stored therefrom, it is difficult to find and use the voice data file again when necessary, and there is a lot of inconveniences such as insufficient capacity of the user terminal device.

The present invention aims to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art.

In addition, an object of the present invention is to increase the reusability of a voice data file obtained by a user through a web page.

In addition, an object of the present invention is to enable a user to be provided whenever necessary from an external computing device without having to classify and store voice data files in the user terminal device.

In addition, the present invention has an object to broaden the application area of the text-to-speech technology to increase the user's interest in the technology.

The configuration of the present invention for achieving the above object is as follows.

According to an aspect of the present invention, a method of extracting text from a web page and converting the text into a voice is provided, the method comprising: extracting text from a terminal device, and computing the extracted text from the terminal device to communicate with the terminal device; Transmitting to the system, generating the speech data file by converting the extracted text into speech in the computing system, compressing the speech data file in the computing system, and compressing the compressed speech data file in the computing system. And storing an identifier indicating a location of the compressed and stored voice data file from the computing system to the terminal device.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a system for communicating with a terminal device, extracting text from a web page, and converting the text into a voice, the system comprising: a text recognition unit for recognizing text extracted from the terminal device; A text-to-speech converter for converting the speech into a voice, a voice data file generator for compressing the voice converted by the text-to-speech converter to generate a compressed voice data file, and a location of the compressed voice data file. A system including a communication unit for transmitting an identifier to the terminal device is provided.

In addition, according to the present invention, there is further provided a computer readable recording medium for recording a method, a system for extracting text from a web page, converting the text into a voice, and providing a computer program for executing the methods.

By using the present invention as described above, when using the text-to-speech technology on the Internet, the user can easily find and use or store the voice data file converted from the text.

Further, according to the present invention, the reusability of the voice data file converted from text is significantly increased, so that the voice data file generated once can be easily reused or shared with a third party without causing a capacity problem of the user terminal device. It becomes possible.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings so that those skilled in the art can easily implement the present invention.

Configuration of the entire system

1 is a schematic structural diagram of an entire system for converting text into speech and providing the text in the form of a voice data file according to an embodiment of the present invention.

As illustrated in FIG. 1, the entire system according to an embodiment of the present invention for converting text on a web page into a voice and then providing the same in the form of a voice data file includes the Internet 500 and the Internet 500. A user terminal device 100 capable of accessing the web), a web application server (WAS) 200 requesting a text-to-speech conversion, and compressing the converted speech to generate a compressed voice data file. A text-to-speech server 300 for performing the operation and the voice data file server 400 for storing / managing the voice data file.

First, the user terminal device 100 included in the entire system of the present invention is a digital device for accessing the WAS 200 through the Internet 500, and may include a personal computer (for example, a desktop computer, a notebook computer, etc.), Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like can be used in various ways without limitation.

User to execute a well-known program by using the user terminal apparatus 100 that enables the web browser or other information retrieval, such as Internet Explorer ^TM, Netscape ^TM, Lynx ^TM subject then connected to the WAS (200), extracting The text on the web page is designated (or, if necessary, the user may directly input at least a portion of the text to be voice-converted on the web page). For this designation, the user can perform a mouseover or mouse dragging over a range of text. Accordingly, the extracted text may be provided to the WAS 200. Preferably, the user may browse the web page where the text he wishes to convert to speech is processed by inputting and transmitting a search query before designating the text on the web page.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, the user terminal device 100 may include a program module (not shown) for extracting a text to be converted into a voice and transmitting it to the WAS 200. Such a program module may be downloaded and installed from the WAS 200 to the user terminal device 100. Meanwhile, a player for playing the voice data file may be further included in the user terminal device 100.

The WAS 200 is a server that generates a voice data file based on text transmitted from the user terminal device 100 and provides the same to the user terminal device 100 according to an embodiment of the present invention. In this regard, although FIG. 1 shows that the WAS 200 is configured separately from the text-to-speech server 300 or the voice data file server 400, according to the needs of those skilled in the art to implement the present invention, It may be combined with or include at least one of the text-to-speech server 300 or the voice data file server 400.

Text-to-speech server 300 is actually a server for performing text-to-speech conversion, according to an embodiment of the present invention, after converting the text received from the WAS 200 to speech, the voice data file It serves to send back to the WAS (200). In this case, the text-to-speech conversion unit (not shown) in the text-to-speech server 300 may perform a process of converting the text into voice. The text-to-speech server 300 may include a voice conversion database (not shown) for text-to-speech conversion.

According to an embodiment of the present invention, information on voice data corresponding to a specific text may be stored in advance in the voice conversion database (not shown) of the text-to-speech server 300. As described above, regarding the technology of acquiring a text data file based on text using a speech conversion database, Korean Patent Application Nos. 10-2007-0119406 (Application Date: November 21, 2007) and 10-2007 of the present applicant -0122819 (filed November 29, 2007).

In addition, according to the well-known text-to-speech conversion technique, a syntax structure analysis is performed on text in syllable, word, paragraph, and / or sentence units, and then the text is converted into a phoneme string through a read conversion process. A voice converted from text may be generated based on phoneme string and syntax structure information and by referring to reading rules and rhyme information stored in a voice conversion database (not shown) of the text-to-speech conversion server 300.

Since the text-to-speech conversion technique as outlined above is already known, it is apparent that the text-to-speech conversion may be performed in the text-to-speech conversion server 300 through various other techniques.

Meanwhile, the voice data file server 400 stores and manages the voice data file transmitted from the WAS 200. The voice data file server 400 may be separately provided with a dedicated database for the function. In addition, the voice data file located in the voice data file server 400 may be identified by an identifier indicating a file location such as a URL for repeated use, and users may reuse the voice data file based on this identifier information. Or share with others.

In the above, the overall system configuration according to an embodiment of the present invention has been described, but it should be understood that this is merely exemplary. For example, in a variant embodiment of the invention, some of the components of WAS 200 may be substantially included in text-to-speech server 300 and / or voice data file server 400. In addition, each server 200 to 400 may be a computer group consisting of two or more computers.

Hereinafter, the internal configuration of the WAS 200 performing the most important functions for the implementation of the present invention and the function of each component will be described.

WAS Internal composition of

2 is a diagram illustrating an internal configuration of the WAS 200 according to an embodiment of the present invention in detail. Referring to FIG. 2, the WAS 200 includes a control unit 210, an interface unit 220, and text recognition. It can be seen that the unit 230, the text-to-speech converter 240, the voice data file generator 250, the communication unit 260 and the like. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the control unit 210, the interface unit 220, the text recognition unit 230, the text-to-speech conversion unit 240, the voice data file generator 250, the communication unit 260 At least some of them may be program modules included in or in communication with the WAS 200. Such program modules may be included in the WAS 200 in the form of operating systems, application modules, and other program modules, and may be physically stored on various known storage devices. In addition, these program modules may be stored in a remote storage device that can communicate with the WAS 200. On the other hand, such program modules include, but are not limited to, routines, subroutines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or execute particular abstract data types, described below, in accordance with the present invention.

First, the control unit 210 according to the present invention flows data between the interface unit 220, the text recognition unit 230, the text-to-speech conversion unit 240, the voice data file generator 250, and the communication unit 260. It performs the function of controlling. That is, the controller 210 according to the present invention controls the flow of data from the outside or between each component of the WAS 200, thereby, the interface unit 220, the text recognition unit 230, the text-to-speech unit 240 ), The voice data file generation unit 250 controls to perform a unique function.

On the other hand, the WAS 200, by providing a user interface that allows the user to search the web page containing the text to be converted to speech, and stores the query sent by the user in a query buffer (not shown), A search engine (not shown) included in the WAS 200 may process a search according to a query, and the user may store a search result for the query configured by the search engine in a result buffer (not shown), and then Can provide for browsing. In order to perform such a process, the WAS 200 may include an interface unit 220.

In addition, according to an embodiment of the present invention, the WAS 200 recognizes the specific text received from the user terminal device 100 in the text recognition unit 230. Such text recognition may merely recognize the text itself received from the user terminal device 100 as a target of speech conversion, and includes processing to check whether the received text includes special characters that are not speech convertible or the like. It may be. In the latter case, the text recognition unit 230 may communicate with the text-to-speech server 300 as needed.

Meanwhile, the WAS 200 may include a text-to-speech converter 240 for text-to-speech conversion. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the text-to-speech conversion unit 240 is transmitted to the text-to-speech conversion server 300 to convert the recognized text into speech, and converted from the text-to-speech conversion server 300 Performs the function of receiving a voice data file. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the voice data file generated by the text-to-speech server 300 may be a WAV file that can be played by a standard media player of Windows ^TM , which is the most widely used user computer operating system.

The WAS 200 may then include a voice data file generator 250. Generally, the WAV file generated by the text-to-speech server 300 is generally the most widely used, but in many cases, the WAV file has an excessively large capacity. Therefore, according to an embodiment of the present invention, it is necessary to generate a voice data file compressed with a WAV file that is an output file of the text-to-speech conversion server 300 without causing excessive degradation of sound quality. The most appropriate compression technique is the MP3 standard compression technique. Compressed voice data files generated by this technique are commonly referred to as MP3 files. Here, MP3 is an abbreviation of "MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3" and refers to the standard that separates and compresses only compression technology regarding audio data from MPEG which is a video compression standard. Compressing voice data by MP3 technology has an advantage that the compression rate is very high and the output file size can be reduced to about 1/10 of the original voice data file while maintaining the CD sound quality. The present inventors have focused on the fact that, in the case of MP3 files, the degradation of the sound quality may be revealed in the high-density voice data, but when the text is converted to speech as in the present invention, the slight degradation of the sound quality does not matter at all.

Meanwhile, the compressed voice data file (for example, an MP3 file) generated by the voice data file generator 250 may be stored and managed in the voice data file server 400. At this time, the WAS 200 stores an identifier indicating a location where the corresponding file is stored in the voice data file server 400 and provides the same to the user terminal device 100 so that the user repeats the file several times. You can use it. As described above, the identifier indicating the file location may be a URL.

Finally, the communication unit 260 receives the text to be converted to speech from the user terminal device 100, transmits the received text to the text-to-speech conversion server 300, the text-to-speech conversion server 300 After receiving the generated voice data file, and after the received voice data file is compressed and stored in the voice data file server 400, a function of providing a file location identifier corresponding to the key value to the user terminal device 100 is performed. can do. That is, the communication unit 260 performs a function of enabling data transmission / reception from / to the WAS 200.

In the above, the internal structure of the entire system and the WAS 200 of the present invention has been described in detail. Hereinafter, a description will be given of an example in which a user may receive a file obtained by voice converting a text of a web page and reuse it or share it with another user according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Application Examples of the Invention

3A to 3B are diagrams illustrating a screen displayed when a user converts text in a web page into an MP3 file and downloads the text according to an embodiment of the present invention.

For example, a user who accesses a web site having a search engine performs a search using a query called 'TOIC study method', selects a specific web document among the searched results, and converts the text in the web document into an MP3 file. Suppose you want to download something to your computer.

According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the user can drag a desired range of text in the web document with the mouse. Then, if the user right-clicks the mouse and selects 'Download selection in MP3 format' from the list of menu bars that are exposed without dragging, the text is extracted from the user's computer and the website A text-to-speech request may be initiated.

Then, the web site receiving the above request requests the text-to-speech to the text-to-speech server included in the operation server or externally located, and the voice data generated according to the request. The file can be compressed and stored in MP3 format again on the website's production server. The MP3 file thus created is located in a predetermined database of the operation server of the web site. The web site operation server returns a URL indicating the location of the MP3 file to the user's computer so that the user can download the MP3 file. . At this time, the user may display a confirmation window as shown in FIG. 3B. The user can download the MP3 file corresponding to the text originally dragged with the mouse by clicking the save button here.

Embodiments according to the present invention described above may be implemented in the form of program instructions that may be executed by various computer components, and may be recorded in a computer-readable recording medium. The computer readable recording medium may include program instructions, data files, data structures, etc. alone or in combination. The program instructions recorded on the recording medium may be those specially designed and constructed for the present invention, or may be known and available to those skilled in the computer software arts. Examples of computer-readable recording media include magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape, optical recording media such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, and magneto-optical media such as floptical disks. optical media) and hardware devices specifically configured to store and execute program instructions, such as ROM, RAM, flash memory, and the like. Examples of program instructions include not only machine code generated by a compiler, but also high-level language code that can be executed by a computer using an interpreter or the like. The hardware device may be configured to operate as one or more software modules to perform the process according to the invention, and vice versa.

Although the present invention has been described by specific embodiments such as specific components and the like, but the embodiments and the drawings are provided to assist in a more general understanding of the present invention, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments. For those skilled in the art, various modifications and variations can be made from such descriptions.

Therefore, the spirit of the present invention should not be limited to the embodiments described above, and all of the equivalents or equivalents of the claims, as well as the claims below, are included in the scope of the spirit of the present invention. I will say.

1 is a schematic structural diagram of an entire system for converting text into speech and providing the text in the form of a voice data file according to an embodiment of the present invention.

2 is a diagram illustrating in detail the internal configuration of the WAS according to an embodiment of the present invention.

3A to 3B are diagrams illustrating a screen displayed when a user converts text in a web page into an MP3 file and downloads the text according to an embodiment of the present invention.

<Explanation of symbols for the main parts of the drawings>

100: user terminal device

200: WAS

210: control unit

220: interface unit

230: text recognition unit

240: text-to-speech unit

250: voice data file generation unit

260: communication unit

300: text-to-speech server

400: voice data file server

500: Internet

Claims (12)

A method of extracting text from a web page and converting the text into speech. Extracting text from a terminal device; Transmitting the extracted text from the terminal device to a computing system that can communicate with the terminal device; Generating a speech data file by converting the extracted text into speech in the operation system; Compressing the voice data file in the computing system, Storing the compressed voice data file in the computing system, and Transmitting an identifier indicating a location of the compressed and stored voice data file from the computing system to the terminal device; How to include. The method of claim 1, And the computing system comprises at least one of a web application server, a text-to-speech server, and a voice data file server. The method of claim 1, Extracting text from the terminal device further includes recognizing a mouse pointer on the text. The method of claim 1, And the speech data file speech-converted from the text is a WAV file. The method of claim 1, And the compressed voice data file is an MP3 file. The method of claim 1, The identifier indicating the location of the compressed and stored voice data file is a URL. A system for communicating with a terminal device, extracting text from a web page, converting the text into voice, and providing the same, A text recognition unit for recognizing text extracted from a terminal device; A text-to-speech converter for converting the extracted text into speech; A voice data file generator for compressing the voice converted by the text-to-speech converter to generate a compressed voice data file, and Communication unit for transmitting the identifier indicating the location of the compressed voice data file to the terminal device System comprising a. The method of claim 7, wherein And a database for storing the compressed voice data file. The method according to claim 7 or 8, The converted voice is stored in WAV format. The method according to claim 7 or 8, And the compressed voice data file is an MP3 file. The method according to claim 7 or 8, The identifier indicating the location of the compressed voice data file is a URL. A computer-readable recording medium for recording a computer program for executing the method according to any one of claims 1 to 6.

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