MacOS: Corrected prophecy.sh file

The prophecy.sh file that's shipped with the MacOS X beta -- at least, the beta I just downloaded -- has several errors in it. the "plist" files have the wrong names, and the file that starts the management console (com.voxeo.vmc.plist) isn't called at all.

Here's a corrected prophecy.sh file. NOTE! I've moved the files from ~/Library/LaunchAgents to /opt/voxeo/LaunchAgents because I don't want Propechy to auto-start.

I'm putting in the minimum corrections here and avoiding the temptation to completely re-write the file...

#!/bin/bash

#set -x

usage()
{
    echo "prophecy: Voxeo Prophecy Control script"
echo "     Possible options are"
echo "         stop    [vserver|vxml|splunk|sipmethod|designer]"
echo "         start   [vserver|vxml|splunk|sipmethod|designer]"
echo "         restart [vserver|vxml|splunk|sipmethod|designer]"
echo "         run     (vserver|vxml|splunk|sipmethod|designer)"
echo "    help"
echo "    status"
}


doLoad="false"
doUnload="false"
doInfo="false"
doRun="false"
sService=""
sPrefix="~/Library/LaunchAgents/"
sPrefix="/opt/voxeo/LaunchAgents/"
eval sPrefix="$sPrefix"


case "$1" in
help|-help|--help)
usage
exit 1
;;
stop|-stop|--stop)
doUnload="true";
;;
start|-start|--start)
doLoad="true";
;;
restart|-restart|--restart)
doUnload="true";
doLoad="true";
;;
run|-run|--run)
doRun="true";
;;
status|-status|--status|info|-info|--info)
doInfo="true";
;;
*) echo "Invalid option: $1"; usage; exit 1 ;;
esac


if test "$2" != ""; then
case "$2" in
vserver)
sService="com.voxeo.vserver.plist";
;;
vxml)
sService="com.voxeo.vxml.plist";
;;
splunk)
sService="com.voxeo.splunkd.plist "$sPrefix"com.voxeo.splunkweb.plist";
;;
sipmethod)
sService="com.voxeo.vsipmethod.plist";
;;
designer)
sService="com.voxeo.vdesigner.plist";
;;
mc)
sService="com.voxeo.vmc.plist" ;
;;

*) echo "Invalid service name: $2"; usage; exit 1 ;;
esac;
sService="${sPrefix}${sService}"
else
if test $doRun = "true"; then
usage;
exit 1;
fi;
sService=$sPrefix"com.voxeo.vdesigner.plist "$sPrefix"com.voxeo.splunkd.plist "$sPrefix"com.voxeo.splunkweb.plist "$sPrefix"com.voxeo.vsipmethod.plist "$sPrefix"com.voxeo.vxml.plist "$sPrefix"com.voxeo.vserver.plist "$sPrefix"com.voxeo.vmc.plist";
fi


if test $doUnload = "true"; then
launchctl unload $sService
fi

if test $doLoad = "true"; then
launchctl load $sService
fi

if test $doInfo = "true"; then
echo prophecy status command has not been implemented
fi

if test $doRun = "true"; then
echo prophecy run command has not been implemented
fi

Silence (and Cheaper Rooms) at eComm

Perhaps this isn't strictly about Voxeo and Prophecy, but after all I'm going to be there, and so are both Voxeo's CTO (RJ) and its new media telephony expert (Dan York).

In other words, it's a good place to be.

For once I'm attending a conference without speaking — from the podium, that is. I certainly intend to pay careful attention to the talks and to allocate generous dollops of time for networking.

The eComm conference schedule and registration is here. I have a discount code which ought to get you 10% off the registration: YFEDHW5E. Oh, and sometime in the next 24 hours it ought to be fixed, but the room rate has now dropped to just $159 per night (instead of $189 per night as listed on the web site and with the call centers).

EDIT: Just heard from the conference organizers: the $159 room rate is officially available. And I'm impressed: Marriott automatically lowered my rate.

Informed Speculation: Voxeo and Text

Here's some informed speculation about the future direction of Voxeo in the area of text.

I wrote about Voxeo's purchase of VoiceObjects in my previous blog post. I've taken another look at their announcement, and Voxeo makes a point of mentioning that "VoiceObjects goes beyond just support of leading VoiceXML platforms by also enabling unified communications via voice, video, text [including SMS] and the web."

Actually, VoiceObjects goes even further. Their tool can develop a single application that operates either in text mode or in voice mode. Their SMS integration is also very interesting. When I'm running on Prophecy I can send SMS messages from CCXML or VoiceXML through an HTTP-based API call to an outside service, but receiving an SMS message is an entirely different kettle of fish. I've had clients ask for outbound SMS services; none so far has been quite up to speed with inbound messages. I want to provide both, and without contortions.

When I was in Australia, if I wanted to manage my account I would send an SMS message to my provider. In response, my phone would enter a dynamic text-driven series of menus. I've never seen anything similar in the US.

So my wish list would be:

  • Outbound and inbound SMS, IM, and email.
  • A method to use my voice grammars to parse inbound text from SMS, IM, email, and other routes.
  • Some way to interact dynamically with mobile phones in a text context.

Will Voxeo provide any the items on my wish list? Voxeo's purchase of VoiceObjects means Voxeo has tools that can support what I want — a possible indicator of future platform capabilities. Voxeo's long-standing public support of the W3's Multimodal Interaction Working Group ("multimodal" is another name for the "unified communications" mentioned in the press announcement) also reveals Voxeo's long-term interest in adding new, non-speech capabilities. I therefore speculate that Voxeo will move into text interactions: Voxeo will find a way to expand its commercial VoIP gateway and its platform to include two-way SMS and two-way instant messages, and Voxeo will also "recognize" text using grammars. And I wonder about two-way email.

As to when this will happen: VoiceObjects is a big bite to chew, and what I've outlined is a lot of work, so who knows? I'll give it until the end of 2009 to get at least one item from my wish list; if it's not ready by then, I'll eat crow and issue a retraction.

Voxeo Purchases Voice Objects for its Developer Tools

Voxeo announced the purchase of Voice Objects today. Voice Objects makes an Eclipse-based VoiceXML editor.

This is a funny coincidence, because I'm in the middle of writing up an assessment for SpeechTek Magazine of a dozen or so different speech development tools and Voice Objects is one of them; I'll reveal in advance of my article that I liked Voice Objects.

I recommend a look at Voice Object's extensive documentation to get a better idea of what they offer. I particularly like the idea of generating project documentation from within the design tool.

Strategically, this fills out Voxeo's suite of tools. Their current design tool is suitable for entry-level programming; Voice Objects is suitable for high-level developers.

Re-Release of CCXML Tutorial Videos

I've re-released the CCXML tutorial videos; they should be compatible with a wider range of clients. Part One, Part 2. You can find links there to download the slides.

Other online videos by me on various topics may be found here.

Voxeo on Mac OS X: Stopping Boot-time loading

As much as I enjoy Prophecy on Mac OS X, I don't want it to start automatically at boot time.

To stop this, move the com.voxeo.*.plist files from ~/Library/Launchagents to the Voxeo install directory (by default, /opt/voxeo). The system tray icon and "prophecy.sh" will no longer work to start/stop services, but "launchctl load com.voxeo.server.plist" will.

Voxeo intends to make "launch on boot" configurable in a later release.

Linux and Mac OS X Versions of Prophecy

Voxeo released a beta of Prophecy 9 that includes Mac OS X and Linux support. The Mac OS X version requires 10.5.x.

In my opinion, the Mac OS X version is wonderful but the Linux version is the proverbial "killer app."

Announcement Tommorow

Just as an FYI to all Prophecy users: pay attention to Voxeo's web site tommorow; they're about to announce some very interesting news about new versions of Prophecy.

Software Rot

"Software rot" is a term I made up years ago; if you leave software unused for six months and attempt to run it, the software almost inevitably fails. There's no known cure other than rigorous control over every piece of hardware and software and all the networking that ties them together. (In other words, there's no known cure.)

I've just tried to run a program on the premises and hosted versions of Prophecy, and ended up fighting software rot for hours and hours. Most of the problems stemmed from configurations: the Avahi DNS service, the /etc/hosts file, and similar rigamarole. I also had to be reminded by Voxeo support that the software, written years ago, was in Voxeo's early version of the CCXML language and not in the W3 1.0 release. Another reason to use DOCTYPE when it's available, I suppose.

However, I did stumble across an odd and subtle problem. In the past, the result of a CCXML.start was a "success" returned by the server. Now the result of a CCXML.start is a "success" and a carriage return. I don't know if that's because of a change in Prophecy, in the underlying parsing software that I use (Python), or something else — but it's another reminder to check your strings carefully and strip off unnecessary whitespace.

CCXML Workshop, Part 2

Part two of the two-part CCXML workshop is now online. Download to your computer and play it using Quicktime or Totem.

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