[speech] PLS Pronunciation Lexicons, link/rel support in HTML5

Hi Daniel (CC to the EPUB and Voice-Browser working groups),

I have reactivated this HTML5 issue [1] which proposes the adoption of  
a "pronunciation" link/rel extension [2], in order to provide first- 
class support for PLS pronunciation lexicons within HTML pages.

In the upcoming v3.0 of EPUB [3], PLS files can be included at the  
publication level (i.e. not on a per-HTML file basis), so EPUB doesn't  
actually depend on this particular link/rel extension (it relies only  
on the "application/pls+xml" MIME type).

Based on Ian Hickson's comments in the W3C bug tracker, it seems that  
a proposed "rel" extension gets accepted once the submitter can prove  
that it is adopted:

"You'll need to write a spec first, and demonstrate that people are  
using the keyword. ... Please let us know once this keyword is  
deployed, for reconsideration."

Consequently, I am tempted to propose a small addition to the EPUB3  
specification, so that XHTML5 documents in a publication can reference  
PLS files, just like CSS files (providing they are declared in the  
EPUB manifest, of course). EPUB would therefore showcase a concrete  
adoption of the link/rel "pronunciation" extension, which would help  
moving its status from "proposal" to "accepted" in the HTML5 working  
group. I don't believe this is a requirement for "rel" extensions to  
actually work, but it would be nice to get official endorsement,  
especially given that this is pretty much a critical issue with  
regards to content accessibility.

Comments welcome.
Regards, Daniel

[1]
http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7601#c6

[2]
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/RelExtensions

[3]
http://epub-revision.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/build/spec/epub30-overview.html#sec-tts

Received on Wednesday, 2 February 2011 20:26:43 UTC