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Appendix A
Glossary
ADI Service Service providing all AG device level functionality for CT Access. The ADI service is supported by Natural MicroSystems AG boards. Functions are provided for establishing and maintaining network connections, determining call status, playing and recording voice messages, and generating and detecting DTMF and other tones.
AG Natural MicroSystem's Alliance Generation product line of telephony and voice processing hardware and software, including highly integrated hardware modules.
agmon Utility program which reads a configuration file and uses it to load and monitor the AG hardware.
asynchronous programming
Enables concurrent processing between hardware boards and the host CPU. The application initiates telephony functions on the AG board and continues its own processing instead of waiting for the event from the AG board to arrive. AG Access and CT Access support this model.
attenuation The decrease in a power value either absolutely or as a fraction of a reference value.
CT Access Natural MicroSystems' development environment for telephony applications.
CTA context Organizes services and accompanying resources around a single processing context. Usually represents an application instance controlling a single telephone call. Some contexts are not associated with a call; an application performing voice conversions does not require a telephone line.
ctahd The handle returned by ctaCreateContext.
decibel (dB) A unit of measure of relative power or voltage in terms of the ratio of two values. dB = 10 log P1/P2, where P1 and P2 are the power level in watts.
DONE event An event sent by AG Access which signifies the completion of an asynchronous function.
Digital Signal Processor
See DSP.
DSP Digital Signal Processor; a special microprocessor that is designed to rapidly perform the calculations required for voice processing.
E-mail Preprocessor
Part of the Centigram Text-to-Speech Converter that interprets e-mail message text input before the text is spoken. The E-mail Preprocessor performs a variety of helpful tasks like stripping out headers, expanding acronyms, and adding missing punctuation.
events Data structures that contain notification of certain conditions or state changes sent from the hardware or service to the application program. All events are represented as a `C' data structure. The structure informs the application what event occurred and provides additional information specific to the event. An indication that playing a message is done is a typical event. See also DONE event.
firmware See VSP firmware.
Hertz (Hz) The unit of frequency. One hertz equals one cycle per second.
MVIP Multi-Vendor Integration Protocol; PCM digital bus standard for integrating various board vendors. Facilitates software-controlled digital switching within the PC chassis.
NMS Natural MicroSystems Corporation.
PCM Pulse Code Modulation; a simple way of encoding voice signals in digital form.
phoneme A character sequence used to indicate a phonetic spelling.
protocol (telephony) Defined procedure for call setup and call teardown.
services In CT Access, a group of logically related telephony functions. A service may be implemented on multiple hardware boards. No matter what hardware is providing the functionality, all services with the same functionality have a standard API. This allows device independent programming.
SUCCESS A return code that for asynchronous functions signifies the function was initiated. For synchronous functions, SUCCESS means that the function was completed. Note that for functions that require board resources, SUCCESS means that the commands necessary to execute the function on the board were delivered to the board. An error can still be returned in an event later.
synchronous function A function that does not return until its operation is complete.
text-to-speech (TTS) The process which converts plain text input into audible speech output.
timeslot Specifies a particular 64kbit/second sub-division of a TDM bus stream. Timeslots number from zero (0) to n where n is stream dependent.
TTS See text-to-speech
UED files Flat text files used by NaturalText to identify target words and substitution words for input text filtering. When an instance of text-to-speech links to a UED file, it begins filtering target words from input text, and replacing them with appropriate substitution strings.
User Exception Dictionary (UED)
Part of the NaturalText software that lets programmers filter text input for difficult-to-pronounce words or acronyms, and replace them with clearly pronounceable words or phrases.
words per minute (WPM)
The speed at which the Text-to-Speech converter processes text input calculated as the average number of words pronounced per minute.
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