VoiceXML 2.1 Development Guide

<sentence> element

The sentence element, (or s element, for those into brevity), is used to format a particular region of TTS to be read out in sentence structure, rather than paragraph structure. Do note that SSML tags are ignored by some of the available TTS engines, while some engines use their own non-compliant markup. Check the Text-To-Speech appendices for additional details.

usage

attributes

xml:lang	Data Type: NMTOKEN	Default: Optional (en-US)
	The xml:lang attribute specifies the language and locale information of the VoiceXML document. If omitted, it will inherit this value from the document hierarchy, or ultimately from the platform default, which equates to 'en-US'. The language and locale information is not case-sensitive. For VoiceXML language options and mappings, see ASR Languages and TTS Languages.

shadow variables

none

parents

none

children

none

code samples

<Sentence xml:lang> sample

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<vxml version = "2.1">

<meta name="author" content="Matthew Henry"/>
<meta name="copyright" content="2005 voxeo corporation"/>
<meta name="maintainer" content="YOUR_EMAIL@HERE.COM"/>

<form id="F_1">

<block>

<prompt>
<sentence xml:lang="en-US">
Brother John saw visions of God.
</sentence>
<sentence xml:lang="en-US">
So they put him in chains, for acting too odd.
</sentence>
<sentence xml:lang="en-US">
As the crowd shouted 'off with his head'.</sentence>
<sentence xml:lang="en-US">
The priest said 'have mercy, lets burn him instead'
</sentence>
</prompt>
</block>

</form>

</vxml>

additional links

W3C SSML 1.0 Specification

ANNOTATIONS: EXISTING POSTS

vibhugarg

2/8/2006 5:13 AM (EST)

Sample code line

<sentence xml:lang="en-US""> to be modified to remove the extra " at the end of en-US

MattHenry

2/8/2006 9:56 AM (EST)

Hi there, and thanks for catching another of my typos. I'll have this fixed and updated very shortly.

Regards,

~Matt

bronson

1/10/2008 5:53 AM (EST)

What does it mean to read something out in sentence structure or paragraph structure? What is the difference between them? The documentation doesn't make this clear.

voxeojeff

1/10/2008 11:08 AM (EST)

Hello bronson,

The <p> (paragraph) and <s> (sentence) elements are primarily used for structuring purposes, and are completely optional. They do not really make a difference as far as TTS read-back is concerned. More information on these elements can be found by visiting the SSML specification:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-speech-synthesis-20031218/#S3.1.7

Hope this helps,

Jeff