Multimodal Tools Project for Eclipse
An entry-level, lightweight package for Web developers who want to add multimodal capability to their applications.
Date Posted: January 10, 2006
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The content of a multimodal application specifies the presentations and interactions in both visual and voice modalities. In most cases, users can choose the most efficient input method when using their mobile devices, which might have limited input, output, and display capabilities.
The Multimodal Tools Project for Eclipse 3.1 lets you use standards-compliant combinations of existing languages to create a multimodal application by adding snippets of speech mark-up to the XHTML visual mark-up. The voice portion of a multimodal application uses VoiceXML, providing an easy way to manage a voice dialog between a user and a speech recognition engine. XHTML+Voice, informally known as "X+V," is the mark-up language used to create multimodal applications.
Mobile devices are targeted for particular uses. They support the features they need for the functions they are designed to fulfill. A multimodal authoring system lets you speech-enable the visible elements of a visual interface, which has particular importance for mobile devices. | | |
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XHTML+Voice, or X+V for short, is a mark-up language for multimodal Web pages. With X+V, Web developers can create Web pages that let end users use voice input and output as well as traditional visual (GUI) interaction. X+V does this by providing a simple way to add voice mark-up to XHTML; hence the name "XHTML plus Voice."
X+V fits into the Web environment by taking a normal visual Web user interface and speech-enabling each part of it. That is, if you take a visual interface and break it up into its basic parts (such as an input field for a time of day, a check box for AM or PM, and so on), you can then enable the use of voice simply by adding voice mark-up to the visual mark-up. X+V consists of visual mark-up, a collection of snippets of voice mark-up for each element in the user interface, and a specification of which snippets to activate at what time. For visual mark-up, X+V uses the familiar XHTML standard. For voice mark-up, it uses a (simplified) subset of VoiceXML. For associating the snippets of VoiceXML and user interface elements, X+V uses the XML Events standard. All these are official standards for the Web as defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that governs Web standards. Please refer to the XHTML+Voice 1.2 specification. | | |
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Motorola, Opera Software ASA, and IBM submitted to the W3C a proposal for an XHTML+Voice open standard. XHTML+Voice is based on XHTML, VoiceXML, and XML Events. All these are open standards. | | |
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After installing the Multimodal Tools Project for Eclipse 3.1 and launching Eclipse, you can create an X+V file by selecting File, New, Other, Voice Tools, X+V file. You can read the XHTML+Voice Programmer's Guide, which provides examples and guided practice in developing a basic multimodal application. You can locate the guide by selecting Help, Help Contents, Multimodal Tools, XHTML+Voice Programmer's Guide.
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You must first download multimodal browser.
After the multimodal browser is installed, the list of installed browsers is under Window > Preferences > Voice Tools > Installed Multimodal Browser. You can launch the multimodal browser by selecting an X+V file and clicking on Run > Run As > Multimodal Application or by clicking on Run > Run... and then creating a new launch configuration for Multimodal Application. | | |
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You can download multimodal browser.
It includes two browsers, developed in a strategic relationship with Opera Software (based on the Opera Browser, Version 7.55) and ACCESS Systems Company (based on the NetFront Browser 3.1 by ACCESS Systems). They are each enhanced with extensions that include the IBM speech recognition and text-to-speech technology, allowing you to view and interact with multimodal applications that you have built using XHTML+Voice. When you install the Multimodal Browsers, the icons for the browsers appear on your desktop, and you can use them to open the browsers and run your multimodal applications. | |
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