Natural language access to software applications

Abstract

This paper reports on the ESPRIT project MELISSA (Methods and Tools for Natural-Language Interfacing with Standard Software Applications) ~. MELISSA aims at developing the technology and tools enabling end users to interface with computer applications, using natural-language (NL), and to obtain a precompetitive product validated in selected enduser applications. This paper gives an overview of the approach to solving (NL) interfacing problem and outlines some of the methods and software components developed in the project.

Javox

“…Previous systems to assist in the development of spoken-langnage systems (SLSs) have focused on building stand-alone, customized applications, such as (Sutton et al, 1996) and (Pargellis et al, 1999). The goal of the JAVOX toolkit is to speech-enable traditional desktop applications -this is similar to the goals of the MELISSA project (Schmidt et al, 1998). It is intended to both speed the development of SLSs and to localize the speech-specific code within the application.…”