Re: phonetic markup

Jason:
>      > Phonetic dictionaries could be created, in a format yet to be defined
>      > (perhaps based on an XML DTD) and then linked into a document via RDF.
> 
Max:
> I still suspect that this won't solve problem like the examples 2a and 
> 2b in shown in my proposal.  (Again, I need to do some study on RDF to 
> understand it better, though.)
> 

ASG: We have been told that there will be ways to point very
finely into documents with XLL and to include RDF fragments
inline in documents.  The details of how this is going to work
are not clear to me.  But markup with capability parallel to the
spell-it-out ability in ABBR should be possible.

Jason:
>      > Each IPA character also needs to be associated with an SGML character
>      > entity so that the phonetic markup can be typed into a standard text
>      > editor. There are many users, including myself, who type HTML directly
>      > into a standard text editor or word processor instead of using a dedicated
>      > HTML authoring tool..
> 

Max:
> Yes, if we decide on using IPA, it definetely needs to be done.
> However, if it's not so simple for people using plain
> editor/word-processing-software to write phonetic stuff, we may not be 
> able to get too many people to use this mechanism.

ASG: 
I have learned of one typeable transcription of IPA.  It is known
as SAMPA and more information can be found starting at

  http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm

Note that the "English" application at this site works only for
British English.  I can get you an American English equivalent
if we need it.

Clearly, more Japanese will be able to type kana right than
English speakers will be able to type SAMPA right!

These phonetic scripts will be a little like HTML in that regard.
It is possible to write it with any text terminal.  It takes some
skill and most people won't bother.  But it is important that you
can access the source in text and fix it because the automatic
methods won't get it right always, either.  At first there will
be a lot of cut-and-try but that works as soon as browsers and
access agents can vocalize from the script.

-- Al

Received on Wednesday, 19 November 1997 08:32:38 UTC