Although I'm not an active FS user, I've been following the discussions for some time.I have some previous experience with VXML (and even with SALT, if you still remember the misguided attempt by MS to highjack the standard.). Here are some thoughts: VXML was created mainly for speech applications, i.e. ASR and TTS. It comes with quite a bit of overhead, which, in my opinion, is not justified for the "classic" IVR development. Yes, the "big guys" use VXML, but many do so for reasons that are more political than technical. If you are a big company, you simply can't "ignore open-standards". A bit like the government. Very few projects are developed "directly in VXML". Most use RAD tools that give a much better programming environment, and actually "hide" VXML. In reality, very few projects rally care about "vendor independence". In fact, I've never heard of a significant voice app ported from one VXML gateway to another... In my opinion, the combination of speech-rec engines, VXML gateways and RAD tools, because of all this extra cost and complexity, does not fit well with the FS philosophy. So, unless there is a specific requirement for speech-rec, the FS developers would be better off using the great tools already available in FS. Andrew _____ From: freeswitch-users-bounces@lists.freeswitch.org [mailto:freeswitch-users-bounces@lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of Matt Porter Sent: April-24-09 1:39 AM To: freeswitch-users@lists.freeswitch.org Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] VoiceXML Ya i think there is definately a disconnect between the peer circles that people run in. There is major adoption of voicexml by the "big boys", who dont care if the tool to generate voicexml costs money.. and between the smaller shops that are sensitive to costs like that. A key driver for voicexml is portability of the IVR script. And yes, i do realize that you can probably count on 1 hand how many real voicexml apps will run on any vendors interpreter with no modification. But the point is that you arent locked in as hard because 90% of your scripts will work anywhere. Think about it though... Why do you have to pay money to join the club (forum)? Why do you have to pay money to get certified? In my mind, keep all the open source projects from offering a low cost alternative and let them keep themselves occupied with religious arguments about the best way to format IVR scripts. You are dancing to their tune! Im not suggesting FS should have VoiceXML. As I have pointed out before on this list, the people that want VoiceXML dont want a half-baked implementation. Probably the worst thing to do, is just kinda sorta get it working.. and then gripe about the lack of adoption. Its all or nothing. If people want a RAD IVR environment, with no care of portability... then what FS offers is perfectly ok and why bother with VoiceXML. On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:39 PM, mszlazak <mszlazak@aol.com> wrote: Well if it's for marketing reasons then maybe that's why FS should do it. After all, the idea is to get people to try something. Plus it is fast in making up a dialogue so someone can quickly test if this will work for what they want. In a previous post, Steve said many don't use it but Voxeo Forums do have posts daily on vxml. Maybe it's the first-timers getting their feet wet. David Knell wrote:
Just sticking 'voice' in front of something doesn't automatically make it a good tool for developing voice applications - there's more marketing here than anything else. And it's not like adding extensions to an existing language to provide IVR control is anything new: it's exactly what you get if you develop for FS in Javascript, Lua or any of its other supported languages.
From my point of view, as a programmer, VoiceXML is the wrong idiom for development of IVR/telephony services; a procedural language works just fine. I suspect that I'm not alone, and I further suspect that that's why there's no real push to get VoiceXML supported.
--Dave
If you don't like vxml then here is a post on voicePHP
http://www.speechtechblog.com/2009/04/22/voicexml-to-go-down-in-the-third-sa ys-voicephp
It's from a vendor but there might be some good ideas to get from what they are doing.
FreeSWITCH needs demand to get vxml and it's not there yet. For now, it looks like the FS community is waiting for demand instead of trying to create it.
David Knell wrote:
On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 14:35 -0400, mszlazak@aol.com wrote:
Great Idea. Try setting up the exact same dialogue with say Voxeo's VoiceXML system and then with Javascript/Lua and pocketsphinx. It's an order of magnitude faster with VoiceXML.
Out of interest, is that using some RAD tool or coding directly in VoiceXML? I ask because VoiceXML strikes me as being a bastard abomination of the highest order, whose sole saving grace is that it's a standardised bastard abomination.
Or is Pocketsphinx the problem?
Cheers --
Dave
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