RE: Information on support in speech synthesizers of language switching

Gregg and Ian,

In addition (besides the lang attribute of the HTML element), HPR can be set
to "automatic language detection" whereby it attempts to determine the
language of the page. If HPR is fairly sure of the language and if that
language is supported, HPR switches to the language for reading the page.
Such analysis is only done for the whole page. There is no switching
mid-page except by user choice.

Jim
http://jimthatcher.com
jim@jimthatcher.com
512-306-0931

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Ian Jacobs
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2000 3:18 PM
To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: 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 17:51:49 UTC