[Accessibility] SSML as an input format (was: Updated requirements document)

[Milan Zamazal]

Hi Olaf,

it's nice to hear and important to know that we are approaching the
common point and that KDE successfully works on KTTSD and takes the TTS
API into account seriously.

>>>>> "OS" == Olaf Schmidt <ojschmidt@kde.org> writes:

    OS> My impression is that most of the work in finding the
    OS> requirements for a common speech synthesis API has already been
    OS> done. Of course there are still some open points, but I hope
    OS> that we can move forward and define the API itself soon.

Yes, it seems we are moving into an intermediate phase between
specifying the requirements and defining the API itself.  Just let's not
stop. :-)

    >> - It is still unclear to me, whether SSML as defined by the
    >> current W3C standard can serve as a good input format able to
    >> express the requirements on the synthesis.

    OS> Do you have any specific reasons for thinking this might not be
    OS> the case?

I have two points here:

- Whether spelling, punctuation reading and capital letter signalling
  modes can be specified as "top-level" values (in a similar way to
  voice/language defaults) independent of particular SSML input messages
  or whether it is necessary to enable or disable them for just a piece
  of an SSML message.  In the latter case it is not possible.

  Well, that was me who brought the modes mentioned above into the
  requirements, so I should probably suggest an answer.  In Speech
  Dispatcher, we use the top-level settings and we haven't met situation
  where that wouldn't suffice yet.

- I still don't know how to use the say-as SSML element properly.  But
  considering the movement of the reading modes to top level, this
  probably doesn't prevents us from further work right now.  I'd still
  like to know more details about the say-as element standardization
  mentioned several months ago.

Regards,

Milan Zamazal

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