RE: Comments on Last Call WD of SSML

Dear Max,

Thank you for your review of the SSML specification last year.  Our
responses are below.

If you believe we have not adequately addressed your issues with our
responses, please let us know as soon as possible.  If we do not hear
from you within 14 days, we will take this as tacit acceptance.

Again, thank you for your input.

-- Dan Burnett
Synthesis Team Leader, VBWG

[VBWG responses are embedded, preceded by '>>>']

-----Original Message-----
From: Max Froumentin [mailto:mf@w3.org]
Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 12:36 PM
To: www-voice@w3.org
Subject: Comments on Last Call WD of SSML



Hi,

I have read the last call WD and here are a few comments (mostly
minor), from an XML purist point of view, as you'll probably find.

1. Why is the xml declaration mandatory? This goes against the XML
   conformance rules, and it means that a standard XML parser could
   not be used as it would accept the absence of a declaration. Since
   this is mentioned twice, I imagine that the WG had a good reason
   to do so, and it would be nice to find why in the spec.

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted
>>> 
>>> The xml declaration is not intended to be mandatory. We will
>>> correct the error.


1.5. Similarly, why is the SSML namespace declaration mandatory? 

>>> Proposed disposition:  (none yet)
>>> 
>>> We do not understand your concern with the SSML namespace
>>> declaration. Can you elaborate?


1.6 Section 3.1 seems to mandate the use of xsi as the prefix of
   schemaLocation.

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted
>>> 
>>> The section 3.1 text regarding the prefix for schemaLocation
>>> will be changed to permit any prefix to be defined for the
>>> Schema schema.

   
2. Why do all the examples link to the schema? It makes them 
   less easy to read, and gives the impression that schemaLocation
   is mandatory.

>>> Proposed disposition:  Rejected (the implied request)
>>> 
>>> We have received comments from other reviewers that our
>>> examples should be complete stand-alone documents. As a
>>> result, the Voice Browser Working Group has taken the
>>> following position with respect to all of its specifications:
>>> We recommend, but do not require, the use of schema. For that
>>> reason, our examples all contain references to the SSML schema.
>>> We will clarify this in the specification.


3. I have trouble understanding this, in 2.1.5: "It is an error if a
   value for alphabet is specified that is not known or cannot be
   applied by an SSML processor.", where "error" is defined as a violation
   of the spec.

   The test above indicates that values other than 'ipa' are allowed
   for alphabet, so this would mean that if a processor doesn't
   understand the value "xyz" (which a SSML producer has just come up
   with), then the processor violates the spec?

>>> No, the SSML *document* violates the specification. As per
>>> the definition of "error", conforming processors may detect
>>> and report such an error and may recover from it.


4. in 2.2.1, the age attribute is defined as being of type "integer".
   that should be positive integer. 

   The style used for '(integer)' seems to indicate a formal reference
   to a type. If it were, this would be more accurately described as
   XML Schema's nonNegativeInteger. Ditto for the variant attribute which would
   have to refer to xsd:integer

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted with changes
>>> 
>>> We agree that the age attribute is incorrectly specified.
>>> It should actually be a non-negative integer. We will correct
>>> this and, where necessary, be more precise in the type
>>> definitions for attribute values. We will also explicitly
>>> indicate that this integer represents an age value in years
>>> after birth.


5. "Durations follow the "Times" attribute format from the [CSS2]
   specification". I think this should be phrased as: "Durations
   follow the <time> basic data type from the [CSS2] specification".

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted
>>> 
>>> We will correct this.


6. The definition of number in 2.2.4 
   "A number is a simple floating point value without exponentials."
   insert 'positive'. (sorry to be pedantic ;-)

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted
>>> 
>>> We will make this change.


7. the name of the <mark> element seems like an element of type ID.
   why not define it as such (see XML 1.0). This would give you the
   extra check (from the XML parser) that a name must not appear more
   than once.

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted
>>> 
>>> The name of the <mark> element is already of type ID.


8. desc seems to be the only element where no examples are shown.

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted
>>> 
>>> We will add an example.


9. the 5th paragraph of 3.1 "It is recommended ..." ends with a ':'

>>> Proposed disposition:  Accepted
>>> 
>>> We will correct this.


10. Stand-Alone documents. What is the difference between that 
    and xml standalone documents?

>>> There is no particular relationship between the use of the
>>> term "stand-alone document" in SSML and "standalone document"
>>> in the XML 1.0 specification. In the former, we intend only
>>> to distinguish between complete SSML documents and fragments
>>> of SSML documents.


Hoping this helps,

Max.

Received on Tuesday, 12 August 2003 14:19:41 UTC