Speaking of Standards

We are very pleased to be the hosts this week for the face-to-face meetings of the W3C’s Voice Browser Working Group (VB) and Multimodal Interaction Working Group (MMI) at Voxeo’s main office in Orlando, Florida.

The MMI Working Group meets Monday and Tuesday. Both groups meet together on Wednesday morning, and then the VB group meets Wednesday afternoon through Friday.

The MMI Working Group will be working on the MMI Architecture Specification and EMMA 1.1. (No web page up yet on EMMA 1.1, but use cases are available as is EMMA 1.0.)

The Voice Browser Working Group will be working on SCXML and VoiceXML 3. Given that Voxeo’s Dan Burnett is the Co-Chair of the Voice Browser Working Group and lead editor on the VoiceXML 3 specification, we’re glad to serve as the host for one of the group’s face-to-face meetings.

We welcome all the W3C working group participants to Orlando and do hope they enjoy both our new office and also the surrounding area!

VoiceXML 3.0 specification continues its march toward release with the W3C Voice Browser Working Group releasing the latest working draft of the VoiceXML 3.0 specification at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-voicexml30-20100831/

This newest draft lists these changes:

• In Section 8.2.5 replaced fetchtimeout with {audio, document, grammar, object, script}fetchtimeout.
• Many, many editorial changes, including the removal of many out-of-date editorial notes
• In section 6.5.2 adjusted text to allow for SSML documents containing extensions.
• In section 6.6.1.1 added fetching attributes by reference to section 8.1.
• Also updated all other uses of these attributes to point to section 8.1.

• Added media fetch properties into section 8.2.5.
• Removed <media> as a child of <property> in section 6.6.1.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve personally found that the best way to understand the changes is to view the “diff” of the version from the previous version at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-voicexml30-20101216/diff.html

Voxeo’s Dan Burnett, co-editor-in-chief of the specification, indicated that this working draft was primarily focused on editorial changes and cleanup of the text. He said there will be more substantive changes in the next draft of the VoiceXML 3 specification targeted right now to come out at the end of February.

Given our interest in VoiceXML and VoiceXML 3, we’ll be continuing to write about it here… you can see related stories at:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/speakingofstandards/category/voicexml/

As the VoiceXML 3.0 specification makes its way toward release, the W3C Voice Browser Working Group announced today the seventh working draft of the VoiceXML 3.0 specification at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-voicexml30-20100831/

This newest draft listed only these changes:

• Revised Legacy profile description to match current thinking.
• Removed SIV Resource (section 5.4) since it is now covered along with the recognition resource in section 5.3.
• Update section 4.4 (Event Model) to match our current thinking about DOM events as the underlying model for all flow control
• Cleaned up text in sections 1, 2, and 5

Per Voxeo’s Dan Burnett, co-editor-in-chief of the specification, the biggest change is the third bullet about the updates to the event model (section 4.4).

Personally, I’ve found the best way to understand the changes is to view the “diff” of the version from the previous version at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-voicexml30-20100831/diff.html

Given our interest in VoiceXML and VoiceXML 3, we’ll be continuing to write about it here… you can see related stories at:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/speakingofstandards/category/voicexml/

At the Voxeo Customer Summit 2010 last week, Dan Burnett, who heads up our communication with standards bodies, gave an update on what is going on with VoiceXML 3. The slides are now available on SlideShare:

I may have a video recording of this session available later this month if the video turned out okay. (It’s in a long post-production queue.)

Interested in trying out VoiceXML today? Read our VoiceXML tutorials and then either sign up for a free account in the cloud on our Evolution developer portal or download a free version of our Prophecy platform

Would you like to learn more about the upcoming VoiceXML 3? Want to learn what is new and how it may help you? If so, please join us for a free webinar on May 20th where Voxeo’s Dan Burnett, current chief editor of the VoiceXML 3 specification, will explain what is new in VoiceXML 3, how it can help you and how you can ensure forward compatibility of existing VoiceXML 2.1 apps. It should be an informative session… please join us and bring your questions.

The W3C Voice Browser Working Group recently released the fifth working draft of the VoiceXML 3.0 specification at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-voicexml30-20100304/

This newest draft made the following changes:

• Added V2 Convenience Syntax appendix, referenced from convenience syntax section..
• Updated Core concepts (sections 4.1 and 4.2)
• Added section stub for the Subdialog Module
• Added Disconnect Module
• Added Connection Resource
• Expanded the description of the Basic Profile
• Added placeholder for new “Enhanced” profile
• Added Play RC
• Added SCXML code and issue list to Grammar module
• Added Record Module
• Updated language identifier definition and link to BCP47
• Added Property Module
• Added basic Transition Controllers text to the Document Initialization and Execution section

A diff between this draft and the previous draft is available at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-voicexml30-20100304/diff.html

Given that Voxeo’s Dan Burnett is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the VoiceXML 3.0 specification, you can expect to see more postings here about VoiceXML 3.0 as it continues to move along the path toward becoming an actual standard.

Today the W3C’s Voice Browser Working Group released another draft of the VoiceXML3 specification. This one primarily adds a new section, 6.16, on Speaker Identification and Verification (SIV), part of what is often referred to as “voice biometrics”. If you haven’t been following the development of VoiceXML 3.0, the draft is worth a read, particularly the beginning where it talks about what the W3C is aiming to do with this new version of VoiceXML.

We’ll be writing more about VoiceXML 3 over the months ahead as the draft continues on it’s path toward becoming a specification. At a real high level, the goals the W3C has include:

• Flexibility – more powerful flow control
• Modularity and adaptability – ability to adapt to usage on everything from mobile devices to the IVR servers to network media servers
• Extensibility – ability to be extended as new technologies and communication means become available.

VXML3 will add SIV functionality, support for video and more. As you’ll note in the spec, it adds “profiles” to support different types of features and functions (to get to that “flexibility” goal).

Voxeo’s own Dan Burnett is co-editor-in-chief of the specification and has obviously been heavily involved over the past weeks and months in moving this work along. I’m hoping to get him on video soon giving more of an overview of what’s new in VXML3… stay tuned…

As I sit here reviewing papers for the upcoming W3C Biometrics Workshop, it occurs to me that I should give some background for this Workshop.

The two standards organizations I’ve had the most involvement with, IETF and W3C, have been adding voice biometrics to their standards in fits and starts for several years now.

MRCPv1, a widely-implemented protocol (API) for interacting with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) engines, did not contain support for Speaker Identification and Verification (SIV), but one of its extensions did.

Portions of this extension made their way into MRCPv2, the standards-track successor to MRCPv1.

The W3C Voice Browser Working Group briefly considered some SIV markup for VoiceXML 2, but there wasn’t sufficient support at the time.

Now, the Working Group is reviewing SIV features for addition to VoiceXML 3. Although the feature set of a W3C specification is not truly set until the specification reaches the Recommendation Stage, this time there appears to be sufficient interest in adding SIV primitives to the language.

To get more information from the knowledgeable public, W3C is holding a workshop to “identify and prioritize directions for SIV standards work as a means of making SIV more useful in current and emerging markets. ” The workshop will be held in early March at SRI in Menlo Park, California.

Although the paper submission deadline has passed, if you were unaware of this workshop and are dying to attend, please email member-siv-submit@w3.org as described in the Call for Participation.

The first Working Draft of VoiceXML 3 has finally been published, which presents a wonderful opportunity to explain the work the group has been doing for the past few years.

Why VoiceXML 3?

As with many programming languages, future versions are expected simultaneously to provide new features and to be simpler to use.

VoiceXML 3 - is precisely designed - is more extensible - contains new features

I often describe the plan for VoiceXML 3 by analogy to the change from Perl 4 to Perl 5. Perl 4 was feature rich but bloated. The designers of Perl 5 analyzed Perl to determine its “core” and modularized the rest in such a way that the combination of the core and several modules reproduced almost all of the functionality of Perl 4. What’s even more amazing was that the syntax of Perl 5 for the most common use cases was virtually unchanged, with only syntactic edge cases needing to change. By rebuilding Perl in this manner, it became vastly more extensible while largely retaining its existing functionality and syntax.

The goals for VoiceXML 3 are similar.

VoiceXML 3 began with the functionality of VoiceXML 2. This functionality was split up into logical modules of related functionality. Each module is now being defined in detail, in two pieces: syntax and semantics. The syntax of the module is similar to the syntax for corresponding capabilities in VoiceXML 2, with the functionality and event behavior of the syntax defined in the semantics portion. These modular pieces are collected into profiles that essentially are complete languages.

So VoiceXML 3 now consists of: - a framework for developing profiles from modules - an XML-based eventing system - an eventing system for the semantic descriptions associated with the syntax of each module - several modules, including new audio control capabilities - two module definitions, one emulating VoiceXML 2.1 and one combining the range of functionality available in VoiceXML 3.0

One nice thing about the new structure is that it is now possible for new modules and profiles to be defined, which should play well with the rest as long as they are defined using the framework in the document.

This is of course a first Working Draft, and thus many changes are still possible. If you are interested in participating in the continued development of VoiceXML, please contact any of us in the Working Group and we’ll help you join.

For more info, check out: The requirements document The specification

As a strong supporter of open standards, I think one of the aspects of our acquisition of VoiceObjects that was only touched on briefly in the video podcast I did is what this means for the world of standards. Specifically VoiceXML. What intrigues me about VoiceObjects’ platform is not just it’s support for standard VoiceXML, but even more its support for cross-platform VoiceXML. Quoting from our news release:

VoiceObjects uniquely enables the development of phone applications that can be deployed on a wide variety of VoiceXML platforms. This capability is in stark contrast to vendor-specific development solutions offered by Voxeo’s competitors. These single-vendor solutions restrict application deployment to a vendor’s own VoiceXML platform, denying the freedom of vendor independence and application portability the VoiceXML standard was designed to support. Voxeo will continue to openly and actively support VoiceObjects’ application deployment on multiple VoiceXML platforms including Aspect, Avaya, Genesys, Intervoice and Nortel. VoiceObjects will also be available in extremely cost-effective on-demand and on-premise offerings bundled with Voxeo’s own Prophecy VoiceXML Platform.

While VoiceXML is itself an open standard, the way VoiceXML is implemented on some platforms (or “extended“) can certainly wind up restricting deployment to that one platform. We firmly believe customers should be able to develop completely standard VoiceXML apps that can avoid proprietary vendor lock-in and can be moved to other platforms if necessary. I’m delighted to see VoiceObjects added to our portfolio of tools so that even more developers can create voice applications and can be independent and portable. Obviously, we think we have an extremely compelling case for people to deploy their voice applications on our platform, but we want people to do so because it is their choice to do so, not because they are forced to do so.

I’m looking forward to writing more here in the weeks and months ahead about VoiceObjects and the standards it supports.

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