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How do I make text sound correct in Text To Speech?

Questions and answers about IVR programming for Plum DEV

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ipath
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 12:44 am

How do I make text sound correct in Text To Speech?

Post by ipath »

How can I read a text file in vxml.
Or is there any way to read a text block in a vxml. I tried to read the text block inside a <prompt> tag. That text block has some mail ids like <meena@iallways.com> ......Its failing.

Is the "<" and ">" creating the problem. If so should i have to replace it with < and >
What are the other char i should chk for and replace with.

Thanks,
Meena

support
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Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2003 3:47 pm
Location: Boston, MA
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IVR question needs clarification

Post by support »

Hi Meena:

can you explain what you mean by read a text file? Do you mean making the text spoken with text to speech, or do you mean read data from another location? please elaborate upon your IVR needs.
Last edited by support on Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ipath
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 12:44 am

Post by ipath »

Actually I have a text block( string ).
I thought I can write the block into a text file and try to read it.Like how we read the .wav files. But, then I found that, its cannot be done that way. So, I just placed the string inside the <prompt> tags.
Thats were i got the problem. My text block was having some mail ids.

Thanks,
Meena

support
Posts: 3632
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2003 3:47 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

IVR will play TTS for any printable characters

Post by support »

Hi Meena:

I think I understand what you are trying to do. When you are providing text to speech for the IVR to play, it's important that all of the characters that are introduced have contextual meaning. For example, the "@" character does not have any meaning in conversational speech, but it does have meaning within an acronym or an email address. a "$" character does not have a valid meaning within the context of an email address, but it is valid for some currencies.

The point is, make sure that the characters you are passing in are valid for a given type of information. The plum IVR will still play TTS for any printable characters, but it won't sound right unless you take contextual meaning into account. The <say-as> tag provides a convenient way to specify what type of context you are trying to present with regards to speech.

You can find more info regarding IVR tags in the official Plum IVR Programmers Reference manual, located here:

http://www.plumvoice.com/docs/dev/voicexml:tags

All supported IVR tags are listed under section 1.1: "Tag Descriptions".
Hope this helps! Reply if you need more assistance :)

kind regards,

Plum Support Staff
Last edited by support on Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.

ipath
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2004 12:44 am

Post by ipath »

Thank you for the clarification.

Meena

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