Re: [g-a-devel]gok/gnopernicus questions

[Peter Korn <peter korn sun com>]

Hi Brian,

> I am helping my manager put together a list of marketing requirements
> for the Sun GNOME desktop, and I had a few questions about Gok and
> Gnopernicus to help me flesh things out.
> 
> 1. What preference options are available in gnopernicus and gok
>    which are necessary requirements in order for these programs
>    to be useful to people with disabilities?
> 
> 2. Could the gnopernicus team provide me with a list of braille
>    displays that are currently supported?

Gnopernicus directly supports the BAUM Vario (20, 40, & 80), the BAUM DM80,
BAUM INKA, and ALVA 380, 544, and 570 displays (see the BAUM Braille device
dialog).  Thanks to a patch from the folks at BrlTTY, Gnopernicus supports a
much larger list of displays - everything that BrlTTY supports - when the
user has BrlTTY installed and active.  That list is maintain at: 
http://mielke.cc/brltty/details.html#displays  Currently (in version 3.3.1)
it is:

  * Alva B.V.: ABT3xx, Delphi, Satellite
  * Baum: Vario/RBT 40/80 (emulation 1/2)
  * Blazie Engineering: BrailleLite 18/40/M40
  * EuroBraille: AzerBraille, Clio, Iris, NoteBraille, Scriba
  * Handialog: VisioBraille 2040
  * Handy Tech Elektronik GmbH: Bookworm, Braille Star 40/80,
    Braille Wave, Modular 20/40/80,
  * La O.N.C.E.: EcoBraille 20/40/80
  * MDV: MB208/MB408L/MB408S (protocol 5)
  * Papenmeier: Tiny, Compact, Compact 486, 2D Lite, 2D Screen Soft,
    EL 2D-40, EL 2D-66, EL 2D-80, EL 40, EL 80, Elba 20, Elba 32,
    IB 80 CR Soft
  * Pulse Data International: BrailleNote 18/32
  * Telesensory Systems Inc.: 
    Navigator 20/40/80 (latest firmware version only),
    PowerBraille 40/65/80
  * Tactilog: LogText
  * Tieman B.V.: CombiBraille 25/45/85, MiniBraille 20,
    MultiBraille MB125CR/MB145CR/MB185CR, Voyager 44/70 (USB)
  * Tiflosoft: VideoBraille 40 

Thanks to BrlTTY, Gnopernicus supports more Braille devices than any other
graphical screen reader "on the planet" (my favorite phrase of the week).

> 3. What i18n issues exist in gok & gnopernicus.  My understanding is
>    that gnopernicus only supports English voices with text-to-speech,
>    that the braille display currently only supports Latin characters
>    and that certain Gok XML files have not yet been translated, and
>    that there are issues with translating them due to the length
>    of the files.  Is this a full/accurate understanding of the
>    existing l10n/i18n/g11n issues in gok & gnopernicus?

I'll leave most of this answer to folks more expert than I.  Sun is planning
on shipping only an English TTS engine - FreeTTS with English.  Additional
voices for FreeTTS are being looked at (contact William Walker sun com) but
aren't anywhere near Sun's redistribution (there are some potential
licensing issues as well).  Gnopernicus uses gnome-speech, and there are
gnome-speech drivers for DECTalk and Eloquence, both of which support a
whole bunch of languages.  I don't believe anyone on this team has tested
Gnopernicus in another locale with an appropriate voice in DECTalk or
Eloquence.  There is a bug report from IBM about the use of Gnopernicus in
French on AIX with a French edition of ViaVoice (IBM's product name for a
branch of the Eloquence TTS software that they own), but as ViaVoice for
Linux is only in English (vs. AIX) we aren't in a position to evaluate that
bug.

Gnopernicus has Braille translation tables for English, German, Spanish, and
Swedish.  Braille in the non-European languages like Arabic, Hebrew,
Japanese and Chinese are somewhat more complex beasts.  I know BAUM has
translation tables for Arabic and Hebrew because they sell Windows products
localized to those languages (I think they are the only Braille vendor for
those markets). 


Peter