RE: VoiceXML vs SALT

Dear Ildar,

SALT and VoiceXML can both be used for multimodal applications, and for
simultaneous as well as sequential multimodality.  Just as SALT tags
must be combined with XHTML to form a multimodal language, so must
VoiceXML be coupled with XHTML.  The XHTML + Voice language (X+V), a
submission to the W3C Multimodal Interaction Working Group, provides a
formal means for doing this, although other approaches to using VoiceXML
in multimodal systems have also been demonstrated.  VoiceXML and SALT
can of course both be used in voice-only applications.

In addition to speech markup features, VoiceXML also includes high-level
markup for controlling the voice dialog.  In SALT, the developer has to
worry about many low-level details such as handling errors, managing
dialog flow, and preventing dialogs from getting into the "hanging state"
(See SALT 1.0 section 2.6.5).  These tasks are all automatically taken
care of in VoiceXML.

SALT tightly combines the visual view and the voice modes through its
heavy reliance on ECMAScript.  In contrast, X+V loosely couples the modes.
This enables distributed architectures that place lower demands on
clients and networks and that leverage the burgeoning ecosystem of
VoiceXML servers and applications.

While VoiceXML and SALT are both markup languages for voice and
multimodal applications, only VoiceXML is on a W3C Recommendation track
today, a significant factor in the huge industry uptake of the language.
It is widely deployed and is commonly accepted as the worldwide standard
for voice applications.  It is in use today in high volume, robust, and
reliable commercial systems.  We would be more than happy to provide more
detailed pointers to such systems upon request.


Sincerely,

Technical Council
VoiceXML Forum
http://www.voicexml.org


-----Original Message-----
From: Ildar Gabdulline [mailto:ildar@realeastnetworks.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 7:20 AM
To: www-voice@w3.org
Subject: VoiceXML vs SALT


Hi,

I am relatively new to voice dialogs.
Could you please describe me - what are the differences between VoiceXML and SALT ?
As I understood for the moment both of them are used for the same purposes - programming of the dialogs.
If this is correct then it seems that having two standard families is redundant.

Please clarify the situation, if it is possible.

Thanks,
Ildar

Received on Thursday, 6 November 2003 20:46:14 UTC