Information on support in speech synthesizers of language switching

Gregg,

This came up on the conference call today. Here's information on this
topic from Mark Hakkinen on the UA list [1] (sent 24 November 1999):

> pwWebSpeak allows synthesizer language changing for the page under these
> conditions:
> 
> 1. The LANG attribute is specified in the HTML element.
> 2. The LANG attribute corresponds to one of the installed synthesizer
> languages.
> 
> Users can manually switch the "reading" synthesizer to one of the installed
> languages, if no LANG attribute is present.
> 
> Presently we don't switch on LANG attributes within a page (though we are
> likely to add that). We do note significant time delays when switching
> between some synthesizers (eg, some SAPI engines may exhibit a long load
> time, particularly when using engines from different vendors). That has been
> a concern of mine if we switch on arbitrary LANG attributes appearing in the
> page as it could introduce unnatural reading flow.

From Jim Thatcher (24 November 1999) [2]:

> Home Page Reader does the same and plans the same. 

Hope this helps,

 - Ian

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999OctDec/0434.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999OctDec/0435.html

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Thursday, 10 August 2000 16:17:52 UTC