Re: Comments about SSML from ITS WG

Dear Jirka (and ITS WG),

Thank you for your comments.  Our responses are embedded below,  
preceded by "DB>>".
If you have any concerns with our responses, please let us know.  If  
we do not hear from you within two weeks of today we will assume that  
you have accepted our resolutions.

Dan Burnett
SSML 1.1 Co-Editor
Voice Browser Working Group

On Jul 17, 2008, at 9:50 AM, Jirka Kosek wrote:
> Hello,
>
> ITS WG reviewed SSML 1.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-speech- 
> synthesis11-20080620/) from perspective of suitability for  
> internationalization and localization.
>
> We would appreciate if you can incorporate our feedback into SSML.
>
> SSML should allow usage of ITS markup (http://www.w3.org/TR/its/),  
> because SSML documents contain natural text with speech markup and  
> as such it is very likely that they can be translated.
>
> SSML currently doesn't provide direct support for ITS and has  
> limited extensibility which prevents using ITS (see below).
>
> Problem 1:
> ==========
>
> Section 2.2.3 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-speech- 
> synthesis11-20080620/#S2.2.3) allows usage of foreign elements  
> inside SSML documents. Thus it is legitimate to use elements like  
> its:rules or its:ruby in SSML documents.
>
> However specification doesn't explicitly allow to use foreign  
> attributes. This means that it is not possible to use local ITS  
> attributes like its:translate.
>
> Solution 1:
> ===========
>
> SSML should allow foreign attributes on any SSML element. Ideally  
> such possibility will not be mentioned only in prose of spec, but  
> also XML schema will specify this using xs:anyAttribute (and  
> similarly by xs:any for elements).

DB>> Resolution:  Accepted with modifications
DB>> Explanation:  We agree that non-SSML attributes should be  
permitted in the same way that non
DB>> SSML elements are permitted, and in fact the other subsections  
of 2.2 describe this in detail.  We
DB>> will extend the text in 2.2.3 to indicate that attributes are  
also allowed.  However, your request to
DB>> allow ITS attributes does not, in our opinion, introduce any  
more need to generalize the Schema
DB>> than was already present in SSML 1.0 (and hence 1.1).  We  
believe that converting the Schema
DB>> to use xs:anyAttribute and xs:any would trivialize the Schema.   
We do not plan to change the
DB>> Schema.

>
> Problem 2:
> ==========
>
> Element sub have attribute alias (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD- 
> speech-synthesis11-20080620/#S3.1.11) which contains text for  
> pronuncation. However it is not possible to attach any ITS category  
> to single attribute. Moreover using attributes for natural language  
> text is against XML I18N BP (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xml- 
> i18n-bp-20080213/#DevAttributes). Using subelement for alias will  
> be better solution.
>
> Solution 2:
> ===========
>
> Use alias subelement instead of attribute.
>

DB>> Resolution:  Rejected (deferred)
DB>> Explanation:  We agree that the inability to add markup to the  
spoken text of the <sub> element
DB>> is a lack within SSML.  This comment was raised during the Last  
Call Working Draft for SSML 1.0
DB>> (see SSCR145-46 at
DB>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-speech-synthesis-20031218/ 
disposition.html#SSCR145-46).
DB>> We still believe that a change of this sort will break  
compatibility with SSML 1.0, and that the
DB>> stated scope of SSML 1.1 (see Section 1.2 in
DB>> http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-ssml11reqs-20070611/#intro) does  
not suggest making this sort
DB>> of change.  We propose to defer this change, as before, to a  
future version where SSML is more
DB>> broadly re-written.

> Regards,
>
> 				Jirka Kosek
> 				on behalf of ITS WG
>
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Jirka Kosek      e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz      http://xmlguru.cz
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Received on Thursday, 18 September 2008 01:20:29 UTC