Board File Format

PhotoVOCA 3 extends the open board format of the 2010 PhotoVOCA release to support multiple languages and mixed language boards. Files are zip compressed with a .voca extension and should include a valid xml manifest: View Schema.

Example Manifest

<photovoca>
  <title>A Sample Board</title>
  <uuid>6A3FECB2-6B32-C9F2-A661-157D522C074F</uuid>
  <license>CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 photovoca.com</license>
  <icon>6A3FECB2-6B32-C9F2-A661-157D522C074F.png</icon>
  <description>This board is using a mix of text-to-speech and digital audio in several languages.</description>
  <category>General</category>
  <primarylanguage>en-GB</primarylanguage>
  <cell>
    <label>Hello</label>
    <utterance> Hello, nice to meet you! </utterance>
    <audio>hello.mp3</audio>
    <weight>0</weight>
    <image>imagename.png</image>
  </cell>
  <cell lang="en-AU">
    <label>G'Day</label>
    <utterance>Gidday!</utterance>
    </audio>
    <weight>23</weight>
    <image>gday.png</image>
  </cell>
  <cell lang="zh-CN">
    <label>你好</label>
    <utterance>你好</utterance>
    <audio>nihao.mp3</audio>
    <weight>3</weight>
    <image>random.png</image>
  </cell>
  <cell lang="en-US">
    <label>Hi</label>
    <utterance>Hi there!</utterance>
    <audio>hi.wav</audio>
    <weight>8</weight>
    <image>image3.png</image>
  </cell>
  <cell lang="fr-CA">
    <label>Bonjour</label>
    <utterance>Quoi de neuf?</utterance>
    </audio>
    <weight>1</weight>
    <image>bonjour.png</image>
  </cell>
  <cell lang="ro-RO">
    <label>Bună</label>
    <utterance>Bună ziua!</utterance>
    </audio>
    <weight>10</weight>
    <image>image6.png</image>
  </cell>
  <cell lang="ar-SA">
    <label>مرحبا</label>
    <utterance>مرحبا</utterance>
    <audio>marhabaan.pvwavdata</audio>
    <weight>20</weight>
    <image>image56.png</image>
  </cell>
  <cell lang="de-DE">
    <label>Hallo</label>
    <utterance>Alles klar?</utterance>
    </audio>
    <weight>13</weight>
    <image>image99.pvbmpdata</image>
  </cell>
</photovoca>

Application Notes

The xml manifest can have any name, older voca use the id and newer the title. It should validate against the XSD, although older archives are converted to the latest format when imported into version 3 of PhotoVOCA.
All images are included in archives and are in png format - when using the camera or importing photos the PhotoVOCA app cuts and scales images down to 200px square. MP3 and riff/wave audio are supported.
Cell lang attribution is with IETF tags.
Voca from earlier in the project sometimes use the extensions .pvbmpdata and .pvwavdata for bitmaps and riff audio (16/44100/2 flat).
Audio, if included, rather than the TTS utterance is played back by PhotoVOCA
Generally boards can be downloaded for non-commercial use and remixing, but please check licenses as some 3rd party commercial stock photography and sound effect files are licensed only for use with PhotoVOCA.