Microsoft Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) was an XML-based markup language developed in the early 2000s, spearheaded by Microsoft and supported by an industry forum (the SALT Forum) to bring speech recognition and synthesis to web-based applications. Key Aspects of Historical Microsoft SALT:
Purpose: SALT was designed to extend existing markup languages like HTML, XHTML, and WML, allowing developers to add speech input and output capabilities to web pages. It focused on enabling multimodal applications—where a user could interact via voice, keyboard, or mouse simultaneously, as well as telephony-based speech systems.
The Approach: Unlike competing standards such as VoiceXML, which were designed specifically for voice-only telephony applications, SALT was designed to treat speech as just another browser capability, similar to how HTML handles images or form elements. Key Components: The SALT specification allowed for: Listen: For speech recognition. Prompt: For text-to-speech synthesis. DTMF: For telephony keypad input. History & Evolution:
Origins (c. 2002): Initiated as a Microsoft Research project, it quickly grew into an open industry standard supported by over 70 companies and universities.
Products: Microsoft integrated SALT into their technology stack, including SALT-aware desktop IE and Pocket IE add-ins.
Speech Server: SALT was the core of Microsoft Speech Server (released in 2003-2004), which was designed for Windows Server 2003 to handle both voice-only telephony and multimodal web applications.
Outcome: While SALT was technically robust, the industry largely moved toward VoiceXML for voice portals, and eventually, the rise of powerful, non-markup-driven speech AI shifted focus away from specialized markup languages like SALT.
If you are interested in the specific API syntax or how it compares to VoiceXML, I can provide examples of the code or more details on that comparison.
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