Patent ID: 6996530

Claim:
An information processing apparatus comprising: a text input mechanism configured to input text data; a first display control configured to control display of a first display screen that aids a user to enter setting for speech synthesis; a first setting input mechanism configured to control input of information representing the setting for speech synthesis, entered by the user with reference to the first display screen, display of which is controlled by said first display control; a phoneme data holder configured to hold at least one kind of phoneme data used for speech synthesis; a generator configured to divide the text data input via said text input means according to a predetermined rule to generate a plurality of text groups, the plurality of text groups including at least one phrase having more than one word; and a speech synthesizer configured to execute speech synthesis using the phoneme data held in said phoneme data holder based on the setting for speech synthesis, input via said first setting input, to generate speech data corresponding to the text data; wherein said first setting input means receives input of a plurality of settings for speech synthesis, and said speech synthesizer executes speech synthesis to generate speech data of different speech properties for adjacent ones of the plurality of text groups based on the plurality of settings for speech synthesis, input via said first setting input.