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Microsoft Speech SDK Changelog

What's new in Microsoft Speech SDK 11

Nov 7, 2011
  • The following tools are new for version 11 of the Grammar Development Tools:
  • CheckPhrase.exe:
  • This new tool takes a phrase and a grammar as input and outputs whether the phrase is in the grammar. Check Phrase emits the custom pronunciations associated with a found phrase.
  • Confusability.exe:
  • This new tool identifies phrases in a grammar that are phonetically similar. This helps you to detect phrases that could ultimately cause users to have a poor experience. Confusability accepts multiple grammar files as input and performs its analysis on the entire set of specified input files.
  • You can choose whether or not the tool emits confusable results for phrases whose semantics match. By default, warnings and results are only emitted when semantics are different.
  • For advanced analysis, the /SemanticPath option allows you to filter the results to compare only the semantic nodes that you specify.
  • Enhanced:
  • GrammarValidator.exe:
  • Validates the syntax for the grammar element's sapi:alphabet attribute and the token element's sapi:pron and sapi:display attributes.
  • Emits a range of warnings when validating a grammar, including the detection of recursion and unreachable rules.
  • PhraseGenerator.exe:
  • Generates a subset of phrases based on weights in the grammar, and you can optionally choose not to expand specified rule references.
  • Simulator.exe:
  • You can choose whether or not to reuse the engine state in the structure of the input EMMA, rather than from an option at the command line. That is, the recognition engine state is now automatically reused only when utterances are contained within an emma:sequence block. In addition, the /ReuseEngineState command-line option has been removed.
  • Simulator Results Analyzer.exe
  • Now provides additional data for tuning your grammars, including out-of-grammar phrase detection and new error-rate categories to give you improved analysis and metrics for simulated recognition.
  • Adds new XML elements (AudioType, RecoResultSemantics, and TranscriptSemantics) to the tool's output to make it easier to analyze results without needing to refer back to the Simulator's output file.
  • The Excel template for generating graphs and tables from the output of Simulator Results Analyzer has been discontinued.
  • More New Features and Enhancements:
  • Support for custom pronunciations. There is expanded support for custom pronunciations both inline in grammars and in lexicon files that are linked from grammars.
  • Explicit handling of SRGS "special" rule behavior. Improved handling and more descriptive output for grammars that contain the NULL, VOID, and GARBAGE rules have been added across the Grammar Development Tools.
  • Support for cookie pass-through. You can now define cookies to use for local or web provider types in both the Simulator's recognition configuration file and the EMMA input file.
  • New installation option. You can choose the path for the installation of the Speech Platform SDK version 11.
  • Windows XP support for SDK tools. The Grammar Development Tools (with the exception of PrepareGrammar.exe) are now supported on computers running Windows XP, but only for some providers. Using the "local" provider is not supported on Windows XP.