BrownAbstract2.tioga

Voice Applications in Cedar

Polle T. Zellweger

Computer Science Laboratory
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center

The aim of the CSL Voice project at Xerox PARC is to extend our existing multi-media office environment with the facilities needed to handle the transmission, storage, and manipulation of voice. We have developed a prototype voice system consisting of Etherphones, a Voice Control Server, and a Voice File Server, in addition to personal workstations. An Etherphone is a special processor that connects to a telephone and transmits encrypted, digitized voice directly over an Ethernet. A short videotape will demonstrate some of the telephone management and recorded or synthesized voice applications that have been integrated into the workstation environment. More recent work on voice annotation of documents and voice editing will be described. I will also discuss a novel scripting mechanism for creating viewing paths through a document or set of documents. Built on the capabilities of the voice system, scripted multi-media documents can contain any combination of text, pictures, audio, and action.