[css3-speech] 'phonemes' property removal accepted

---------- Forwarded Message -----------
From: Daniel Weck <daniel.weck@gmail.com>
To: epub-working-group@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, 4 May 2011 20:14:35 +0100
Subject: [css3-speech] 'phonemes' property removal accepted

FYI:
On today's conference call, the CSS Working Group agreed [1] to remove  
the 'phonemes' property [2] (and its associated 'alphabet' at-rule)  
from the Speech Module draft.

I will write a note to explain why we decided to remove the property  
[3]. I will also add some information about document-wide  
pronunciation lexicons ("rel" extension proposed by EPUB3, W3C PLS as  
a possible format). Furthermore, I will mention the adoption by EPUB3  
of SSML's phoneme functionality (here's hoping that a similar solution  
will be baked into HTML5 in a not-too-distant future, if not based on  
native attributes, maybe specified and implemented based upon "data-"  
attributes...).

I am working on other substantial edits that will lead (within this  
month's timeframe) to either an updated public Working Draft (which  
would be dated, and therefore useful from the perspective of EPUB's  
release schedule), or to a request to publish the first Last Call  
Working Draft. The latter option is my current target (many thanks to  
Fantasai for being instrumental in the progress made so far).

Additional note:

One avenue to explore is the use CSS to "bind" HTML text with a  
phoneme (also declared in the HTML document). This would maintain a  
clear separation between content and presentation, and it would allow  
authors to define different pronunciations for one given text token  
(Media Queries could drive the switch of stylesheet to import). This  
possibility has been mentioned several times by Working Group members  
as well as people from the public mailing-list, so it cannot be  
ignored. However, there are architectural considerations (e.g.  
collision between CSS versus HTML -defined phonemes) which make this a  
lot trickier to standardize than it sounds. Not only this doesn't fit  
within our timeframe, I also believe (like others, e.g. [4]) that the  
whole "speech synthesis" issue should be tackled globally at the level  
of the W3C ecosystem. For example, there are many cross-cutting  
concerns with the work done by the HTML-Audio [5] and HTML-Speech [6]  
Incubator Groups. To cut this long story short: I don't think this  
will make it into the CSS3 Speech Module, as it needs a longer-term  
collaboration with other committees.

Regards, Daniel

[1]
http://log.csswg.org/irc.w3.org/css/?date=2011-05-04

[2]
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-speech/#phonemes

[3]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Apr/0746.html

[4]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-htmlspeech/2011Apr/0055.html

[5]
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/htmlspeech/live/NOTE-htmlspeech.html

[6]
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/audio/charter
------- End of Forwarded Message -------

Received on Wednesday, 4 May 2011 19:37:34 UTC