VoiceXML Review - Letter from the Editor

Volume 1, Issue 11 - December 2001

Dear Readers,

As you are well aware by now, the W3C released the first public working draft of the VoiceXML 2.0 specification on October 23, 2001. You can access a copy of the 2.0 specification and MOU signed by W3C and the VoiceXML Forum at http://www.w3c.org/voice. Last month, we announced we would deviate from our previously published editorial calendar to provide coverage of the new specification. In this issue, we're pleased to bring you feature articles on VoiceXML 2.0 authored by Jim Larson (chair of the W3C Voice Browser Working Group) and Scott McGlashan (chair of the Voice Browser Dialog Subgroup and Editor-in-Chief of the VoiceXML 2.0 specification.) Both of these articles are "must reads" for everyone involved in VoiceXML.

Jim Larson's article entitled "What's New with VoiceXML 2.0" presents a broad sketch of the entire W3C Speech Interface Framework, which includes not only the Dialog Manager (i.e. VoiceXML 2.0) but also components for ASR, TTS, language understanding, context interpretation, etc. All of these areas are being defined in companion specifications (such as the W3C Speech Recognition Grammar Specification, and the W3C Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification and others - some of which have been covered in previous issues of the VoiceXML Review) by the W3C Voice Browser Working Group. This article is helpful in developing the big picture perspective of the various W3C speech-related specifications and how they fit together.

Scott McGlashan's article entitled "VoiceXML 2.0 From the Inside" provides detailed technical coverage on how the VoiceXML 2.0 evolved out of the original VoiceXML 1.0 language specification. For folks who plan to migrate VoiceXML 1.0 applications to VoiceXML 2.0, this article is a good starting point for understanding exactly what has changed and why. In addition, Scott provides valuable "insider" insight on what might yet change in the 2.0 specification (its still a working draft&) and what's being deferred to VoiceXML 3.0 and beyond.

In our First Words column Rob Marchand provides a running commentary on Appendix J (Changes from VoiceXML 1.0) of the VoiceXML 2.0 specification.

Our regular Speak & Listen columnist, Jeff Kunins is "on vacation" this month, after a long and busy year of bringing VoiceXML to the masses. In lieu of his column, you might want to preorder his new VoiceXML book at amazon.com!

Finally, in closing, I'd like to remind you that the VoiceXML Review's 2002 Call for Papers and Author Kit has been published on-line. If you have something of general interest to share with the VoiceXML community, please check out the new editorial calendar for 2002 and submit your article. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Jonathan Engelsma
Editor-in-Chief, VoiceXML Review

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