RE: vocalization and BIDI in SSML (was: RE: Consolidated comments on SSML)

I believe this issue is being worked by W3C WAI,
protocols and formats group.

I do not accept your response, but defer to the WAI input to the WG.

regards DaveP




> Dear Dave,
> 
> Here is our response:
> 
> >>> Proposed disposition:  Rejected
> >>> 
> >>> There is an ability already in the spec to access an external
> >>> lexicon to adjust pronunciation of specific words as you suggest.
> >>> We understand that synthesizers do not always pronounce words as
> >>> the author intends, and we agree that there are cases where you
> >>> want a lexicon, but we do not believe this requirement to be a
> >>> special one only for some languages.
> 
> If you believe we have not adequately addressed your issues with this
> response, 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.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David.Pawson@rnib.org.uk [mailto:David.Pawson@rnib.org.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 12:04 AM
> To: w3c-wai-pf@w3.org
> Cc: www-voice@w3.org
> Subject: RE: vocalization and BIDI in SSML (was: RE: Consolidated
> comments on SSML)
> 
> 
> 
> I'm certainly not happy with the response below.
> From our 3 year experience with synthetic speech it is blatantly clear
> that "As long as  there is a way to write the text, the 
> engine can figure
> out
>  how to speak it." produces jibberish in many cases.
> 
> This is the basis for the external 'speak as' file. The synth
> can usually speak a word reasonably if 'taught' by such a 
> method. 
> 
> Fine if the end user can glance at a piece of text, but a lot
> more important if the audio is the only access the user has 
> to information.
> 
> 
> regards DaveP
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Al wrote:
> > I think we may want to consider how these responses fit with 
> > accessibility.
> > from Dan Burnett on behalf of Voice Browser WG:
> > 
> > -- Please quote this citation in follow-ups:
> > http://www.w3.org/mid/ED834EE1FDD6C3468AB0F5569206E6E91AF1CF@M
> > PB1EXCH02.nuance.com
> > 
> > ]
> > 
> > Dear Martin (and the Internationalization Working Group),
> 
> > [VBWG responses follow]
> > 
> > [1] Rejected.  We reject the notion that on principle this is
> > more difficult for some languages.  For all languages supported
> > by synthesis vendors today this is not a problem.  As long as
> > there is a way to write the text, the engine can figure out
> > how to speak it.  Given the lack of broad support by vendors
> > for Arabic and Hebrew, we prefer not to include examples for
> > those languages.
> >  > General:
> >  > [01]  For some languages, text-to-speech conversion is 
> > more difficult
> >  >        than for others. In particular, Arabic and Hebrew 
> > are usually
> >  >        written with none or only a few vowels indicated. Japanese
> >  >        often needs separate indications for pronunciation.
> >  >        It was no clear to us whether such cases were considered,
> >  >        and if they had been considered, what the appropriate
> >  >        solution was.
> >  >        SSML should be clear about how it is expected to 
> > handle these
> >  >        cases, and give examples. Potential solutions we 
> > came up with:
> >  >        a) require/recommend that text in SSML is written in an
> >  >        easily 'speakable' form (i.e. vowelized for Arabic/Hebrew,
> >  >        or with Kana (phonetic alphabet(s)) for Japanese. 
> (Problem:
> >  >        displaying the text visually would not be 
> > satisfactory in this
> >  >        case); b) using <sub>; c) using <phoneme> (Problem: only
> >  >        having IPA available would be too tedious on authors);
> >  >        d) reusing some otherwise defined markup for this purpose
> >  >        (e.g. <ruby> from http://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/ for 
> Japanese);
> >  >        e) creating some additional markup in SSML.
> >  >
> 
> - 
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Received on Monday, 11 August 2003 03:51:14 UTC