Could there be UTR #53 (one of TTS Names, Read-out labels, Localization labels) and their application please?

Unicode Technical Report #51 includes the following, in section 7.

> There is one further kind of annotation, called a TTS name, for text-to-speech processing.

and

> TTS names are also outside the current scope of this document.

What are now each named as a TTS name were once, by implication, each named as a read-out label.

Quote from http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2014-m04/0083.html which is quoting from an early draft of UTR #51.

> There is one further kind of label, called a "read-out", for text-to-speech.

There was also a separate thread at the time.

http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2014-m04/0086.html

http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2014-m04/0096.html

Now that there is discussion over the possibility of including emoji ZWJ sequences, I suggest that there are now so many images being considered for encoding each either as a regular character or as an emoji ZWJ sequence and that the trend is to encode more and more emoji and that image differences of some from others are often not great and that the intended meanings are not always immediately obvious if they are displayed in running text, particularly at small sizes, that the following be considered.

1. Rename TTS Name as Localization label.

This change widens the scope of what is presently named a TTS name from just text-to-speech to become text-to-speech and image-to-written-natural-language.

An application program, maybe an email application, maybe a PDF document display progarm, maybe something else, could, at the request of an end user displaying the page use either or both of text-to-speech and image-to-written-natural-language as desired. Image-to-written-natural-language could be either inline or on a tooltip type label when there is a mouse-over of the particular image. When image-to-natural-language is used inline, it could either replace the image or be in addition to the image as desired.

2. Produce Unicode Technical Report #53 Localization labels and their application

UTR #51 states as follows.

> TTS names are also outside the current scope of this document.

So it seems reasonable to have a separate Unicode Technical Report that is about that topic.

Certainly, there is nothing in principle, as far as I am currently aware, to stop any manufacturer adding such functionality as I have mentioned in the previous section of this post, yet I opine that it would be best if a standardized way of doing so were in a Unicode Technical Report and that there are standardized localization files available, preferably from the Unicode webspace.

I fully appreciate that if there is a file format put forward in a Unicode Technical Report that it might well not be the format that I suggested in 2014. I appreciate that there are experts in localization who may well have better ideas for the particular format that would be specified if Unicode Technical Report #53 Localization labels and their application is produced.

William Overington

Friday 19 August 2016
Received on Fri Aug 19 2016 - 09:59:44 CDT