Galaxy Communicator Open Source Toolkit:

Toplevel Index

The Galaxy Communicator Open Source Toolkit (OSTK) is a suite of wrappers and servers which you can use to help construct end-to-end voice- and telephone- enabled dialogue systems. This suite exploits the Galaxy Communicator software infrastructure (GCSI), an open source distributed, message-based infrastructure optimized for dialogue system design. The OSTK requires Galaxy Communicator 3.3beta1 or later.

The MITRE contributions to the OSTK are distributed under the same license as the GCSI. Other contributions may have slightly different open source licenses.

Components of the toolkit

In these tables, we describe the servers which are currently available and also those which we hope to release in the future. We don't have documentation for a number of the available servers yet, for which we apologize. The distribution also contains scripts for running some server configurations, which we also have yet to document. All these servers require the relevant GCSI server libraries (that is, the C library for C servers, the Java library for Java servers, etc.).

Text input/output

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
MITRE UI server	1.0	server	none/Python	MITRE	MITRE	Stable C and Python implementations from Galaxy Communicator 3.2 distribution. Will eventually be collapsed with IO podium.
MITRE I/O podium	1.0	server	JDK/Python	MITRE	MITRE	Stable Python and Java implementations from Galaxy Communicator 3.2 distribution. The message sets differ from each other slightly. Will eventually be collapsed with UI server.

Audio

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
SoX wrapper	not yet released	wrapper	SoX	MITRE (planned)	N/A	We intend to build a wrapper around the SoX audio conversion library. This task is complicated by the way SoX deals with its input and output.
JDAS	1.0beta1 (frozen)	server	JDK 1.3	MITRE	not supported	JDAS is a first attempt at a cross-platform audio server; however, due to the limitations of JavaSound, it works reliably only on Windows. We've abandoned it in favor of a C implementation based on PortAudio.
audio echo	1.0	server	none	MITRE	MITRE	The audio echo server can be used to test audio devices. It copies audio from an incoming broker connection to an outgoing broker connection.
MITRE terminal PTT server	1.0 (frozen)	server	none	MITRE	MITRE	Somewhat misnamed speech monitor server from Galaxy Communicator 3.2 distribution. Primary purpose is to notify an audio server to start listening. Provided for historical purposes.
CSLR Dialogic audio telephony server	not yet available in OSTK	server	none	CSLR	CSLR	CSLR distributes this server as part of its Communicator-compliant dialogue system toolkit, available on an open-source basis for noncommercial use. MITRE and CSLR have plans ultimately to distribute this server as part of the OSTK under a full open source license.
keypad server	0.9	server	JDK 1.3	MITRE	MITRE	A keypad simulator extracted from JDAS. Functional, but still under development. We hope to expand this to cover a wider range of GUI-based audio control.
CATS PortAudio server	not yet released	wrapper	PortAudio	MITRE and others (in development)	N/A	We are using the PortAudio audio I/O library to build a successor to JDAS which actually works on multiple platforms. We intend to fold in telephony support developed by third parties.
Simple audio control	1.0	server	Python 1.5 or greater	MITRE	MITRE	A Python GUI push-to-talk server which sends messages to start and stop listening. Ultimately to be merged with the keypad server, perhaps.

Speech recognition

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
JSAPI wrapper	0.1	wrapper	IBM ViaVoice or other JSAPI-compliant recognizer, JDK	MITRE	unsupported	A number of years ago, MITRE attempted to abstract from a number of sources a proposed message set for speech input and output. As part of this effort, we developed a JSAPI wrapper which we demonstrated working with IBM ViaVoice. This code (and the accompanying standardization effort) is dormant, but we're providing it in case someone finds it useful.
Sphinx wrapper	not yet available in OSTK	wrapper	Sphinx	CSLR and CMU	CSLR and CMU	CSLR distributes a wrapper for a modified version of Sphinx as part of its Communicator-compliant dialogue system toolkit, available on an open-source basis for noncommercial use. CMU distributes a similar wrapper as part of its Communicator-compliant system under a full open-source license. MITRE is making arrangements to distribute a wrapper based on either or both of these sources.
Mississippi State ISIP wrapper	not yet available in OSTK	wrapper	ISIP recognizer	ISIP	ISIP	ISIP has constructed a Communicator-compliant wrapper for their speech recognizer. This wrapper is not yet publicly available, but we hope to make it available as part of the OSTK.

Parsing

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
Phoenix wrapper	not yet available in OSTK	wrapper	CSLR Phoenix parser	CSLR and MITRE	MITRE	CSLR distributes the Phoenix parser, and a wrapper for it, as part of its Communicator-compliant dialogue system toolkit, available on an open-source basis for noncommercial use. This wrapper produces strings which must be parsed with accompanying CSLR libraries in downstream servers. The MITRE wrapper produces output as frames instead. This wrapper is not yet correct, and the Phoenix parser is not yet independently available under a full open-source license. We and CSLR hope to address these issues in the near future.

Dialogue

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
MIT dialogue tools	included in Galaxy Communicator distribution	server library	none	MIT	MIT	MIT continues to develop these dialogue tools and uses them in all their dialogue systems. They have been part of the Galaxy Communicator distribution from the very beginning.
MITRE dialogue manager	not yet available in OSTK	server library	Python	MITRE (under development)	N/A	MITRE is developing some simple dialogue tools for use in proof-of-concept systems. This effort is still very preliminary, but we hope to expand it.

Database

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
Oracle wrapper	1.0	wrapper	Oracle 7, 8, perhaps later	MIT/MITRE	not supported	Stable implementation from Galaxy Communicator 3.2 distribution. No longer supported.
PostGres wrapper	1.0	wrapper	PostGres	MITRE	MITRE	Stable implementation from Galaxy Communicator 3.2 distribution.

Synthesis

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
Festival wrapper	1.0	wrapper	Festival	MITRE/University of Edinburgh	MITRE	Stable implementation from Galaxy Communicator 3.2 distribution. Alan Black, the developer of Festival, contributed this wrapper. CSLR distributes a different wrapper as part of its Communicator-compliant dialogue system toolkit, available on an open-source basis for noncommercial use, and CMU distributes an analogous wrapper as part of its Communicator-compliant system under a full open-source license. MITRE is making arrangements to distribute a wrapper based on as many of these sources as possible.
Speechify wrapper	not yet available in OSTK	wrapper	Speechify	CSLR	N/A	CSLR has constructed a wrapper for the SpeechWorks Speechfiy TTS product. In the future, MITRE may distribute this wrapper as part of the OSTK.
TrueTalk wrapper	1.0	wrapper	TrueTalk (Entropic synthesizer, no longer produced)	MITRE	not supported	Stable implementation from Galaxy Communicator 3.2 distribution. No longer supported.

Generation

We have not yet identified any appropriate language generation tools.

Utilities

Package	Version number	Server or wrapper?	Other software required	Developed by	Supported by	Status
Frame transducer	0.1	server	Python	MITRE	not supported	This tool is a general-purpose frame transducer for Galaxy Communicatof frames. The transduction language is not well-documented, and development has stopped on this tool.
Hub visualization server	0.1	server	JDK	MITRE	MITRE	This tool supports the not-yet-documented API for remote Hub displays (see the `-gui` argument of the Hub executable). This tool is under active development.

Installation

This distribution requires the Galaxy Communicator software infrastructure (GCSI) 3.3beta1 or later, and also requires GNU make to compile on Unix.

Step 1

Copy GC_HOME.make.in to GC_HOME.make, and set the value of GC_HOME in GC_HOME.make to the root directory of your Galaxy Communicator software distribution.

Step 2

Create Makefile.settings.<ARCHOS> (see the Galaxy Communicator installation documentation for appropriate values for <ARCHOS>). either by copying it from another location or from Makefile.settings.in, or execute make -f Makefile_settings.make, which will compute the correct ARCHOS value for you.

Step 3

Populate the Makefile.settings.<ARCHOS> file as instructed to enable compilation of the various servers.

Step 4

Compile. The available compilation targets are identical to those available in the Galaxy Communicator distribution.

Other sources of GCSI-compliant software

See the links page for the GCSI.

Please send comments and suggestions to: bugs-darpacomm@linus.mitre.org
Last updated January 28, 2002.

Galaxy Communicator Open Source Toolkit: Toplevel Index