JavaSpeech

JavaSpeech is a tiny application created in the Java programming language, whose purpose is to read aloud any text that you paste into its window.

It has a robotic male voice. This type of software is practical when preparing for upcoming presentations or transforming ebooks into audio books.

If you don't already have the Java Runtime Environment installed on your computer, it's necessary to download and set it up. However, there is no other installation involved.

The downloaded package contains a single file that can be copied anywere, even on pen drives to run it on another machine with Java. It doesn't update the system registry with new entries, nor does it create new folders or files on the disk.

As far as the GUI goes, the application has a single window that contains two buttons, for speaking and quitting to the desktop. Text has to be typed or pasted inside the dialog box before clicking the button. This triggers the robotic male voce to read contents aloud. There are no other noteworthy aspects.

Unfortunately, JavaSpeech is a rudimentary tool. For example, it doesn't support word wrapping and it's necessary to enlarge the window to increase the text reading area. However, this doesn't really work because the elements are not resized to fit the new window dimensions.

On top of that, the program doesn't integrate features for pausing or pausing the speech, not to mention for adjusting the reading speed or volume level. We attempted to exit the application during a speech but this didn't work, so we had to terminate its process from Task Manager. JavaSpeech used a moderate amount of system resources. We are also keeping in mind that the developer hasn't updated it for a long time.