ANN: formsPlayer combines XForms and the CSS3 Speech Module to produce multimodal forms

ANNOUNCEMENT
The formsPlayer [1] team have made available a talking shopping-cart
demonstration to illustrate the ease with which speech can be integrated
into an XForms [2] application. Using declarative mark-up rather than
script, an author is now able to indicate that XForms data is to be =
spoken,
as well as choose a 'voice' and language processor that should be used =
to
speak the information.

Just as with visual XForms messages, spoken ones are completely dynamic
(with text coming from the XForms data model), and can be triggered =
using
DOM 2 Events or XML Events [3].

And if no text-to-speech (TTS) engine is detected by formsPlayer, =
messages
are rendered visually instead, making it easy to use the same XForms =
mark-up
to target other platforms and processors.


MULTIMODAL SHOPPING-CART
A Flash video of the multimodal shopping-cart sample is available here =
(with
sound):

    <http://www.formsPlayer.com/demo/self-serve/self-serve-800x600.html>


The full XForms sample is available here:

    <http://www.formsPlayer.com/demo/self-serve/self-serve.html>

Note that this live sample requires formsPlayer and Microsoft Agent [4] =
to
be installed. Information on how to do this is available here:

=20
<http://www.formsPlayer.com/download/install/instruction/speech-install.h=
tml
>


SUPPORTED TTS ENGINES
The current version of formsPlayer supports Microsoft Agent as the only =
TTS
engine. However, since formsPlayer supports an XML-based extension =
mechanism
(the Extensible Binding Language, or XBL [5]) then other TTS engines can
easily be incorporated, and will be in the future.


SYNTAX
The syntax used to specify speaking messages is based on the current =
Working
Draft of the CSS3 Speech Module:

    <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-speech>

The implemented features are illustrated in detail here:

    <http://www.formsPlayer.com/demo/multimodal/speech.html>

The syntax may change if the draft changes. Also, the next release of
formsPlayer will incorporate more of the features specified, including =
mark,
volume, pitch, speed and pause.


FEEDBACK AND SUPPORT
If you have any comments on our multimodal work, or have problems using =
any
of the features, there is an active Yahoo! Group where questions will be
answered, and suggestions for improving formsPlayer gratefully received:

    <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/formsPlayer/>

We look forward to your comments.


NOTES
[1] formsPlayer is an XForms processor that implements the entire
    XForms 1.0 standard as a plug-in for Internet Explorer 6:

    <http://www.formsPlayer.com>

[2] XForms is a W3C standard for the next generation of web-based
    forms:

    <http://www.w3.org/Markup/Forms>

[3] XForms processors are required to support XML Events, which is
    an XML language that allows DOM 2 Event listeners to be defined:

    <http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-events/>

[4] Microsoft Agent is a speech processor from Microsoft:

    <http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/>

[5] XBL was originated for the Mozilla browser. The formsPlayer
    implementation is based on:

    <http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xbl/xbl.html>


Best regards,

Mark

PS If you are on many lists I apologise for the multiple copies that you
will have received.


Mark Birbeck
CEO
x-port.net Ltd.

e: [email protected]
t: +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
w: http://www.formsPlayer.com/

Download our XForms processor from
http://www.formsPlayer.com/