RE: Speech Synthesis Markup Language Version 1.0

Dear Dave,

Thank you for your review of the most recent SSML specification draft.
Our responses are below.

If you believe we have not adequately addressed your issues with our
responses, please let us know as soon as possible.  If we do not hear
from you within 14 days, we will take this as tacit acceptance. 

Again, thank you for your input.

-- Dan Burnett
Synthesis Team Leader, VBWG

[VBWG responses are embedded, preceded by '>>>']

-----Original Message-----
From: DPawson@rnib.org.uk [mailto:DPawson@rnib.org.uk]
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 12:22 AM
To: www-voice@w3.org
Subject: Speech Synthesis Markup Language Version 1.0



Having reviewed the above document, please note it covers 
all our (RNIB's) usage of Speech Synthesis, with the exception of
1. Generating a silence.
   Although this could be done using an 'empty' external file,
   The cleanliness of the generated silence is rarely as good as
   an automatically generated one.
Rationale: For later, automatic processing of synthetic speech,
 usually for alignment with text.

>>> Proposed disposition:  Rejected?
>>> 
>>> If we understand your suggestion correctly, this capability
>>> is already present in the specification via the break element.
>>> Can you either indicate what you need that the break element
>>> does not provide or further explain your suggestion?


2. Re the external 'words' file.
   Although the lexicon has been included, we have found that our lexicon
   has grown to some hundreds of words. It is tedious to have to repeatedly
   enter the <say-as> content each time. If we could refer to the lexicon,
   effectively saying <lexit>Word-to-be-pronounced-differently</lexit> i.e.
   please use the pronunciation I told you about last time, then this would
   save labour. (I'm not assuming a lexicon available to the synth
externally,
   which could be a viable alternative, since Laureate is the only one I've
used
   which had a comprehensive lexicon facility).

   So yes, please allow not the <lexicon> element, but some reference to it,
elsewhere.

>>> Proposed disposition:  Rejected
>>> 
>>> As we understand your request, it is already possible to
>>> accomplish what you wish, without the use of a new element,
>>> merely by using special lexicon tokens in the running SSML
>>> text. For example, "<speak> Here is my special word: special_word1.</ speak>",
>>> where "special_word1" has a custom pronunciation in your lexicon.
>>> If this is insufficient for your needs, can you clarify your
>>> original request further for us?
>>> 
>>> We will clarify the second paragraph of 3.3 to indicate that
>>> the lexicon contains both tokens and pronunciations and that
>>> what we refer to as "words" are actually tokens used for lookup
>>> in lexicons.

Regards DaveP.
AC RNIB.

(Still looking for an implementation Dave).


**** snip here *****

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Received on Friday, 8 August 2003 20:11:49 UTC