You are indeed correct in that we convert to JSGF as the native format for our own ASR engine. If you are running on Nuance we will convert stuff to Nuance’s native format as needed allowing you to use SISR there as well without worrying about what the ASR engine is that is under the covers. This also use of things like GSL on Nuance 9 where they no longer support the “legacy” grammar format.

As for the version of SISR, we actually support both the older $ syntax as shown in Matt’s posting as well as the newer “out” syntax from the W3C Recommendation version. You should be able to just use either version in your code code and we will attempt to process it correctly. If you have problems with this please let us know as it’s a bug and we would love to fix it

Thanks for the kind comments and be sure to let us know if there is anything else we can do to help out!

Best regards,

RJ

From you tip/trick, I infer that the platform translates all grammars to JSGF format for your own ASR engine. Do you do the same for Nuance’s one? I guess not, right? Can one use SRGS grammars with SISR tags when using the Nuance ASR? Converting all GSL semantic tags to SISR is certainly feasible, but the converse is not.

Also, do you intend to support the new version of the SISR spec in a near future?

By the way, I installed Prophecy 7.0 last year (the free version) and it worked out of the box. I can’t say the same for most of the other platforms I use on a daily basis. Nice job, guys!

You raise some very valid points here, specifically in regards to certified-compliant platforms. You are correct in that 100% compliance to the SISR specification isn’t required to be a cerified-complaint platform, yet partial compliance to the SRGS specification is at least hinted at. The grammar formats used in the 800+ indivudual tests for compliance use SRGS formatted grammars, but specific adherance to the SISR specification isn’t really tested.

Click any of the links in the Voxeo’s CTR report to get a feel for exactly what is, and isn’t tested in terms of grammar formats; the test numbers listed will allow you to view the VXML and grammars that are used in the compliance test suite:

http://www.voicexml.org/platform_certification/voxeo2/voxeo_prophecy_ctr.html

Lastly, I wholeheartedly agree with you in regards to grammar porting being a very important part of any IVR application (dialog design is the only thing more important, in my estimation), and choosing the right format before you start crafting the utterances & interpretations and subgrammar rules is of the utmost importance.

New Tip/Trick: The Prophecy plaform natively translates all grammars into JSGF format before interpretation occurs. If you want a fast and effective translation utility to switch your GSL/SRGS into the JSGF format, just run the application with the debugger open, and then check the logs carefully, as the translated JSGF grammar is listed right there in the logstream!

=^)

~Matt

Great post, I think compliance to W3C’s standards is a must. That said, you use the old SISR syntax for specifying return values and accessing referenced rules values.

Also, is it really true that grammars written using SISR will run on all Certified Compliant VoiceXML platform? I may be mistaken, but SISR is not in the scope of the VoiceXML Forum’s certification program.

In my experience, the biggest challenge in porting an application from one platform to another is porting the grammars, tweaking the confidence/rejection thresholds, phonetic dictionaries, etc. There are other issues, as well, but from a performance point of view, grammars are the most important.

What do you think?