SSML 1.1: Last Call Working Draft Disposition of Comments

1. Introduction

This document describes the disposition of comments in relation to Last Call Working Draft of the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-speech-synthesis11-20080620/). Each issue is described by the name of the commenter, a description of the issue, and either the resolution or the reason that the issue was not resolved.

Notation: Each original comment is tracked by a "(Change) Request" [R] designator. Each point within that original comment is identified by a point number. For example, "R200-1" is the first point in the change request number 200 for the specification.

2. Summary

Note that resolutions are listed in the detail section for each issue.

2.1 Clarifications, Typographical, and Other Editorial

Issue R1-1

From Jirka Kosek (2008-07-17):

Hello,

ITS WG reviewed SSML 1.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-speech-synthesis11-20080620/) from perspective of suitability for internationalization and localization.

We would appreciate if you can incorporate our feedback into SSML.

SSML should allow usage of ITS markup (http://www.w3.org/TR/its/), because SSML documents contain natural text with speech markup and as such it is very likely that they can be translated.

SSML currently doesn't provide direct support for ITS and has limited extensibility which prevents using ITS (see below).

Problem 1:
==========

Section 2.2.3 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-speech-synthesis11-20080620/#S2.2.3) allows usage of foreign elements inside SSML documents. Thus it is legitimate to use elements like its:rules or its:ruby in SSML documents.

However specification doesn't explicitly allow to use foreign attributes. This means that it is not possible to use local ITS attributes like its:translate.

Solution 1:
===========

SSML should allow foreign attributes on any SSML element. Ideally such possibility will not be mentioned only in prose of spec, but also XML schema will specify this using xs:anyAttribute (and similarly by xs:any for elements).

Resolution: Accepted

Issue R2-1

From Doug Schepers (2008-07-23):

I was asked for my review from the perspective of compound documents for section 2.2.3 (Using SSML with other Namespaces),

My high level comment is that, though this section is in the conformance section and does use some normative language ("The synthesis namespace MAY be used with other XML namespaces as per the appropriate Namespaces in XML Recommendation"), it does not introduce any specific mechanism beyond those already provided in the Namespaces in XML specification. Is this intended to be tested?

The example given looked fine from a technical standpoint (that is, the markup looks correct). It would be helpful to explain the example more, to explain what the use case it is trying to solve is. In general, it would be nice to see a few more use cases that explain why an author would want to mix other namespaced content in, and examples how to do it... this would include examples where SSML is the host language, and where it is the supplementary language.

I don't think these comments are critical for the specification, but more consideration of the mixed-namespace scenario may lead to wider use of SSML on Web resources targeted for desktop browsers as well as voice browsers. This might be explored more in a supplementary document, such as a tutorial.

Resolution: Accepted (w/modifications)

Issue R3-1

From Felix Sasaki (2008-09-18):

(This comment was sent as a private/personal reply to http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-voice/2008JulSep/0019.html)

My reaction may not come to you as a surprise ... I would propose a similar resolution as for the PLS 1.0 schema. Both in PLS 1.0 and SSML 1.1 you already have one element for general, additional markup. In SSML 1.1 this is the metadata element which has both element and attribute extensibility. I understand that you do not want to introduce general element extensibility, but I would propose you to do the same as I proposed for PLS 1.0: add general attribute extensibility to the SML 1.1. schema. I think this is harmless and a huge benefit for "foreign vocabularies" like ITS.

Resolution: Accepted

2.2 Technical Errors

None.

2.3 Requests for Change to Existing Features

Issue R1-2

From Jirka Kosek (2008-07-17):

Hello,

ITS WG reviewed SSML 1.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-speech-synthesis11-20080620/) from perspective of suitability for internationalization and localization.

We would appreciate if you can incorporate our feedback into SSML.

SSML should allow usage of ITS markup (http://www.w3.org/TR/its/), because SSML documents contain natural text with speech markup and as such it is very likely that they can be translated.

SSML currently doesn't provide direct support for ITS and has limited extensibility which prevents using ITS (see below).

Problem 2:
==========

Element sub have attribute alias (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-speech-synthesis11-20080620/#S3.1.11) which contains text for pronuncation. However it is not possible to attach any ITS category to single attribute. Moreover using attributes for natural language text is against XML I18N BP (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-xml-i18n-bp-20080213/#DevAttributes).
Using subelement for alias will be better solution.

Solution 2:
===========

Use alias subelement instead of attribute.

Resolution: Rejected

2.4 New Feature Requests

None.