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

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron sun com>]

Okay, I have collected a good bit of information about GOK and 
Gnopernicus in relation to the following questions that I asked about a 
week ago:

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?

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?

The responses that I got included the following information.  I am 
wondering if anybody has any more information or detail to add.  Thanks much

Brian

--summary follows--

+ Peter Korn highlighted that Gnopernicus has the following Braille
  Display support:

  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).

  The current PRD only mentions two Braille Displays.  Do we want to
  mention a more complete list?

+ David Bolter from the GOK team highlighted that the ability the choose
  scanning speed is an important GOK preference that we can consider
  mentioning in the PRD.

+ Not sure if it needs mention in the PRD, but a good summary about the
  remaining i18n/l10n/g11n limitations came out of this discussion.
  These include:

  + Gnopernicus does not support non-English voices.  Sun currently only
    supports the English TTS engine called FreeTTS.  William Walker at
    Sun is looking at providing additional voices.  Gnopernicus can use
    gnome-speech instead of FreeTTS which has drivers for DECTalk and
    Eloquence, which do support other languages.  However, the a11y team
    has so far not been testing the use of Gnopernicus in this way.
  + Gnopernicus does not support multi-locale braille
  + According to Peter Korn, Gnopernicus has Braille trasnlation tables
    for English, German, Spanish, and Swedish.  Braille in the
    non-European languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese are
    somewhat more complex.  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).

  + In GOK, the locale-specific keyboards for GOK have not been
    localized.  The layout for these keyboards is stored in XML
    files that are too large to be localized in the manner that
    XML files are normally localized.  Bill has been working with
    Mike Twomey to try and find a resolution for this problem.

Brian