Re: [css3-speech] 'speakability' property name

Hi !
There are currently no implementations of 'speakability' [1], as it  
has only just been created from the old [2] 'speak' property (which is  
now split into 2 distinct properties).

Existing implementations [3] of previous versions of the CSS3-Speech  
draft will have to be updated anyway, so we might as well grab the  
opportunity to fix the specification now. Given the scarcity of both  
CSS-Speech/Aural implementations and content, I would have thought  
that the "annoyance" caused by the renaming / refactoring of the  
speaking properties would be minimal. Note that the proposed change  
would not diverge much from the old CSS 2.1 Aural Appendix [4] either:

'speak' ==> [auto | none | normal]
'speak-style' ==> [ normal | spell-out | digits | literal-punctuation  
| no-punctuation ]

(PS: I am not keen on your suggested 'pronunciation' property name,  
because of the risk of confusion with phonemes and lexicons ... thus  
why I propose 'speak-style' instead)

Thoughts ?
Daniel


[1]
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-speech/#speakability

[2]
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-css3-speech-20041216/#speaking-props

[3]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Mar/0389.html

[4]
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html#speaking-props


On 27 Apr 2011, at 13:21, Andrew Thompson wrote:

> You're correct, use of this invented  word is ugly.
>
> This is tricky because in an ideal world I think speakability would  
> in fact be speak (as in speak: none or speak: auto) and the existing  
> speak property would work well if it were called pronunciation  
> (pronunciation: normal, pronunciation: spell-out). Still no chance  
> of that now.
>
> 'Speaking' doesn't work because it's the present participle of a  
> verb (gerund) and you need a noun construct like speaking-style or  
> an adjective for consistency.
>
> Some alternatives
> 'speech'
> 'audibility'
> 'aural'
> ?
>
> On Apr 26, 2011, at 10:32 PM, Daniel Weck <daniel.weck@gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> Hello !
>>
>> I am not a native english speaker, so I would like to query your  
>> opinion about the 'speakability' property name [1]. A better  
>> alternative may be 'speaking', but I'm concerned about its  
>> juxtaposition with the existing 'speak' property, and the resulting  
>> potential misinterpretations.
>>
>> Note that although CSS3-Speech is directly "inspired" by SSML [2],  
>> the closest equivalent to the 'speak' CSS functionality is  
>> described in the "say-as attribute values" W3C Note [3]. I would  
>> however not recommend the use of "say-as" instead of 'speak',  
>> because in the case of CSS3-Speech, the feature scope is much more  
>> limited (in other words, using "say-as" would effectively be  
>> misleading).
>>
>> Regards, Daniel
>>
>> [1]
>> http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-speech/#speaking-props
>>
>> [2]
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/
>>
>> [3]
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/ssml-sayas/
>>

Daniel Weck
daniel.weck@gmail.com

Received on Wednesday, 27 April 2011 13:12:58 UTC