Motorola 1 manual Overview, What is VoxML, Purpose of this Document

An Introduction to VoxML 1.0

Overview

1. An Introduction to VoxML 1.0

Overview

Part of the reason that the World Wide Web has been so popular is the relative ease with which authors can create content using HTML. For all its faults, HTML has served its purpose as a vehicle for the presentation of rich text as well as images, hypertext links, and simple GUI input controls.

VoxML offers the same ease of production to voice applications. In one sense, VoxML offers the same building blocks as HTML: text (which is read via text- to-speech), recorded sound samples (analogous to images), navigational controls, and input controls.

However, writing a voice application is very different from writing a GUI application, and thus the structure of VoxML is very different from HTML. Here are some examples of the differences:

∙HTML specifies a two-dimensional layout, whereas VoxML specifies a “layout” in the time dimension only.

∙HTML is designed and displayed in whole-page units, while VoxML is designed and delivered in whole-dialog units, but presented in much smaller units, called steps.

∙A single HTML page often presents the user with dozens of options, which would overwhelm the user of a voice application. In general, voice applications should limit the number of options available at a given step in the dialog to ease the burden on the user’s short-term memory and to improve the performance of the speech recognition.

What is VoxML

VoxML is based on XML. As such, VoxML follows all of the syntactic rules of XML, with semantics that support the creation of interactive speech applications. For more information on the exact structure of the language with respect to XML, see the VoxML 1.0 DTD (Document Type Definition) which is available in Appendix A.

Purpose of this Document

This document serves as the official language reference for VoxML 1.0. It contains information on the syntax of the elements and their attributes, example usage, the structure of VoxML documents (or DIALOGs), and pointers to other reference documentation that may be helpful when developing applications using VoxML.

This document is intended for VoxML application developers.

October 1998 VoxML 1.0 Language Reference 1