25 March 2002

Potentially Breaking Changes
These changes were made for compatibility with upcoming working drafts of the VoiceXML 2.0 and Speech Recognition Grammar specifications.

• The ABNF syntax for referring to other files by URL has changed from $(...) to $<...>. This was to avoid a conflict caused by the fact that '(' and ')' are valid characters in a URL. This change also applies to enrolled grammar references, which now look like $<enrolled:/....> rather than $(enrolled:/....).
• The alias declaration and tag have been removed from both the ABNF and XML grammar formats. You can no longer declare an alias for an external grammar. Instead, you must refer to it by its URL each time you reference it.
• In XML grammars, the repeat attribute of <item> no longer allows "?", "*", and "+". Instead, you must use "0-1", "0-", and "1+", respectively. Similarly, ABNF grammars no longer allow "?", "*", and "+", though these characters are still reserved.
• Both ABNF and XML grammars now allow looser ordering of meta and lexicon declarations. These may now come in any order; previously all lexicon declarations had to precede all meta declarations.
• <say-as> throws an error.badfetch if the vxml version is 2.0 and the name of the tag is "sayas".
• <sayas> throws an error.badfetch if the vxml version is 1.0 and the name of the tag is "say-as".
• <say-as> throws an error.badfetch if it contains a class attribute as class is not a valid attribute for <say-as> in vxml 2.0
• <value> throws an error.badfetch if the vxml version is 2.0 and it contains any of the class, mode or recsrc attributes as these attributes are not valid for <value> in vxml 2.0 .
• The type attribute for <say-as> as well as <sayas> should be consistent with the types allowed in that vxml version . For example, if type="phone" is specified for <say-as> then an error.semantic is thrown as it is a valid type in vxml 1.0 but the type has changed to "telephone" in 2.0.
• The values realspeak_us_female and articulator_uk_male have been deprecated for the bevocal.voice.name <property>. They cannot be used as values for the name attribute of <voice> tag also.
• The previous versions of <sayas> or <say-as> used to provide recorded output. Now they correctly provide an output in the text-to-speech.

Enhancements

VoiceXML Interpreter

BeVocal Extensions

• The Equity and Stock Index builtin grammars now have variants that allow you to spell out the symbol for the stock or index rather than saying the name. To use this variant of the grammar, add the parameter "symbol=true" to the grammar name, e.g.
  <grammar src="builtin:grammar/equity?symbol=true"/>
  
• A new session variable, bevocal.sessionid, provides a unique id for each call. You can use this value if you need to keep track of call-specific information in a server-side component of your application and can't use cookies for some reason.
  
• A new attribute bevocal:mode is added to the <say-as> tag and it can be set to the value "recorded" , if recorded output is desired via the <say-as> tag .
  

VoiceXML 2.0

• ABNF and XML grammars now support repeat probabilities. The syntax is
  token <1-3 /0.9/>
  in ABNF, and
  <item repeat="1-3" repeat-prob="0.9">token</item>
  in ABNF. In this example, the first instance of the token has a probability of 1.0, and the optional repetitions 2 and 3 have a probability of 0.9. See the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification for more details
  
• The property maxspeechtimeout is now supported. It specifies the maximum duration of user speech. If this time elapses before the user stops speaking, the event maxspeechtimeout is thrown. The default duration is 6 seconds.
• The <catch> tag now allows you to omit its event attribute, which specifies that it should catch all events. We were previously supporting this by allowing the syntax <catch event="">, which will be deprecated in our next release. If you were using the old syntax, please convert your applications by removing the empty event attribute.
• Full support for <say-as> types as specified in the vxml 2.0 spec.
  

Bug Fixes

Interpreter

• 3394: The dtmf attribute of <choice>, <option>, <link>, etc. now allows spaces within multi-digit dtmf sequences. To allow the sequence 1 2 to select a menu choice, you can use either <choice dtmf="12"> or <choice dtmf="1 2">.
  
• 3731: When JavaScript numbers with integer values were submitted to an HTTP server via the namelist attribute to <submit>, <subdialog>, <data>, etc., they were formatted with a trailing ".0". This has been fixed.
  
• 3736: Remotely-loaded SpeechObjects failed at their first playAndRecognize call with an with AccessControlException.
• 3747: The builtin "street" grammar was throwing an IllegalArgumentException when it was matched.
• 3750: JSGF grammars caused an error.badfetch wen they were parsed.
• 3766: <bevocal:connect> and <bevocal:hold> were not flushing the prompt queue, causing prompts queued while an outbound call was on hold to be played after the outbound call was re-connected.
• 3677: The bevocal outbound notification service did not post anything to the URL specified by the postBackURL parameter. Now , it posts the status of the outbound call to the postBackURL. Also, Even if the outbound call to the destination number resulted in status "busy" or "noanswer" and if there was a retry specified , the call was never retries. The Outbound call is retried now .
• 3767: The aniexpr attribute of the <bevocal:dial> used to throw a null pointer exception and did not work. Now, it works correctly.
• 3457: If type="phone" is specified for <say-as> then an error.semantic is thrown as it is not a valid type in vxml 2.0.
• 3466: if type="digits" is specified for <say-as>, then an error.semantic is thrown hinting that number:digits type should be used instead.

• 3659: Sometimes Cafe said "I'm sorry there was a parse error" instead of its usual login prompts. This was due to an error on our web server, which has been fixed.
  
• 3775: The file manager page returned an error if an account had no active application. This has been fixed.
  
• 3909: The Grammar Compiler tool would result in a compile failure if the top rule in the grammar referenced subrules defined in the same file. Now, if all the rules referenced by the top level rule are defined in the same file , then this error is not thrown.