Q.

How Can I Find More Tools to Troubleshoot Speech Applications?

A.

Grammar compilation and loading, speech application call flow, and Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) error codes are all complex topics with which any speech application developer might need occasional help.

At the Microsoft Download Center, there's a small collection of tools that a speech application developer might find useful. The tools were not included with the Microsoft Speech Application SDK Version 1.1 (SASDK). They are unsupported, but they’re free.

The tools are listed and described in the following sections.

GramStat Speech Utility for Microsoft Speech Technologies

The GramStat Speech Utility is a command-line utility that provides statistics for both compiled files and raw grammar files. These statistics can be used to perform basic grammar analysis, and to troubleshoot grammar compilation problems and loading problems.

Recognizer Speech Utility for Microsoft Speech Technologies

The Recognizer speech utility is a command-line utility that is useful for the analysis of offline call flow, the diagnosis of simple speech recognition errors , and top-line error diagnosis for grammars, rules, and speech application installations.

SAPIErr Speech Utility for Microsoft Speech Technologies

The SAPIErr speech utility is a command-line lookup utility that is useful for deciphering SAPI error codes that are returned by either the speech recognizer, the Microsoft Speech Server 2004 prompt engine, or the SAPI itself.

GetPron Speech Utility for Microsoft Speech Technologies

The GetPron speech utility is a command-line tool that takes a list of words and the outputs pronunciations for those words that are used by the Microsoft Speech Server 2004 speech-recognition engine.

BuildAppLex Speech Utility for Microsoft Speech Technologies

The BuildAppLex.exe speech utility is a command-line tool that enables you to create an Application Lexicon by using the Speech API. The BuildAppLex.ese speech utility requires one required command-line argument: a text file that contains a list of words and their corresponding pronunciations.

These tools can be downloaded by searching Microsoft.com for ‘speech utilities’ or by going to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=52744fb8-9238-4cbd-b615-be2ca781880d&displaylang=en.