Re: DECtalk driver and french language

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Hi:

Please see my previous reply.  We have #1 and #2 below in GNOME, to some
extent.  Individual elements don't need locales in GNOME (though in the
case of PangoLayouts we do have similar info which we expose in <lang>
tags), since locales are set on a per-application basis. 

So we do indeed have #1 and #2 but they are relatively
untested/unexercised.  There is certainly no reason for gnopernicus to
wait before recognizing and acting on <lang> tags, as long as they do it
in consultation with our internationalization folks.

I am cc'ing michael.twomey who is helping out in this area.  We need to
make sure that we are indeed seeing the <lang> tags as we expect in
at-spi AccessibleText via pango (logging pango bugs if not), and create
a couple of test cases, but the basic mechanisms are there.

Detecting per-application LANG/locale is something we know how to do now
but which will require a small api addition to AccessibleApplication. 
However, per-locale applications are a very rare use case in GNOME (in
fact there is no way for a non-command-line-shell user to accomplish
this), much more common are partially or incompletely-localized
applications.    Unfortunately POSIX gettext provides no means for
knowing whether strings have been correctly localized or are just
fallbacks to the C locale, so in order for this to work correctly
applications must be thoroughly localized.  Well-localized applications
should work well with this framework since the only out-of-locale text
should be content which is explicitly marked with <lang> tags.

best regards,

Bill

> On-the-fly language switching is definitely in our thoughts.  There are several
> things that are needed to do this right and fully:
> 
>  1. text content needs to be tagged, and rendered by a client that
>     knows about and conveys to AT those tags (e.g. StarOffice)
> 
>  2. individual UI elements should have locales associated with them
> 
>  3. Gnopernicus needs to recognize these locales/tags and render them
>     appropriately
> 
> We're not far from #1, but we aren't quite there yet (unless I'm mistaken, in
> which case I trust someone from the StarOffice team will speak up).  We have #2
> in Java, but not in GNOME yet.  We cannot solve that problem ahead of the rest
> of the GNOME desktop.  #3 is basically waiting on #1 and #2 (and probably
> version 1.1).
> 
> But rest assured, it remains in our thoughts, intentions, and even plans!
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Peter Korn
> Sun Accessibility team
> 
> > Bill Haneman writes:
> > > From: Bill Haneman <bill.haneman@sun.com>
> > >
> > > Hi Nath:
> > >
> > > Adding another language to gnopernicus' speech is something we would
> > > like to do. I don't see any significant issues with gnome-speech, though
> > > there are a couple of issues with multi-language use in gnopernicus.
> > >
> > > I am cc-ing gnome-i18n@gnome.org because whatever we do in this area
> > > needs to be coordinated with the existing GNOME internationalization
> > > framework. We don't want to come up with something totally nonstandard.
> > >
> > > I forsee the need to do four things in order to make sensible use of
> > > multi-language speech in gnopernicus:
> > >
> > > (1) gnome-speech needs to standardize its "LANG" property so that the
> > > languages which can be spoken by a given "Speaker" can be determined. In
> > > gnome-speech 0.2 I believe that, although the 'parameters' are all
> > > numeric values, they may be enumerations
> > > (GNOME_Speech_Parameter.enumerated == true) and in such cases you can
> > > call GNOME_Speech_Speaker_getParameterValueDescription() to get a string
> > > containing, for instance, "en_UK" or "fr".
> > >
> > > (2) gnopernicus needs to select an appropriate Speaker based on the LANG
> > > currently being used. This may be difficult since currently gnopernicus
> > > associated speakers with different types of spoken output; probably
> > > making this work for multi-language cases will require a revision of the
> > > way gnopernicus chooses its voices.
> > >
> > > (3) gnopernicus must, in order to do this, pay attention not only to its
> > > own current locale (for the 'default' LANG value), but listen for the
> > > <lang> text attribute and change speakers accordingly. In practice we
> > > don't have too many examples of this yet, but we expect to have more
> > > language tagging in the future. I think we get <lang> tags in our
> > > AccessibleText already if the text comes from a pango layout that uses
> > > something other than the application's default locale, but this hasn't
> > > been tested yet.
> > >
> > > (4) eventually we'll need to provide a means for gnopernicus to
> > > determine the locale/lang of the applications which it's interacting
> > > with; we think we know how to do this now (via window manager properties
> > > _WM_LANG) but it's not implemented yet.
> > >
> > > If what you want to do is change the speaker used for the whole desktop
> > > then you can do this with no problem, and I think that fairly
> > > straightforward changes to gnopernicus would allow you to select a
> > > Speaker appropriate to the locale that gnopernicus is running in. But if
> > > different text sources are in different languages, gnopernicus will need
> > > to start looking at language tags in its text stream and selecting
> > > speakers accordingly.
> > >
> > > I think that it may be worth extending the gnome-speech parameter API
> > > slightly to make language-capability queries a little easier.
> > >
> > > Since neither Marc nor I are bilingual (though I can almost understand a
> > > little en Franc,ais), perhaps you should be the pioneer here :-) Would
> > > you be interested in tracking this with Marc and the
> > > internationalization folks within Gnome?
> > >
> > > best regards,
> > >
> > > Bill
> > >
> > >
> > > regards,
> > >
> > > Bill
> > >
> > > Nath wrote:
> > >
> > > >Hi all,
> > > >
> > > >In Gnopernicus I switched to the DECtalk driver and it works but now I
> > > >would like to add french language. do you think it will be possible
> > > >easily or does it require a lot of modifications in the gnome-speech
> > > >source code ?
> > > >To give you an idea : In order to add french capabilities to the DECtalk
> > > >software fonix send us an additionnal tar.gz file containing the
> > > >following files :
> > > >- libtts_fr.so (which is in /usr/local/lib)
> > > >- dtalk_fr.dic (which is in /usr/local/lib/DECtalk)
> > > >
> > > >So if you have an idea about how to do in order that gnome-speech
> > > >considers these files ? It will be very very nice for french users !
> > > >
> > > >Thanks in advance.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > > gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
> > 
> > --
> > 
> >                                 Janina Sajka, Director
> >                                 Technology Research and Development
> >                                 Governmental Relations Group
> >                                 American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
> > 
> > Email: janina@afb.net           Phone: (202) 408-8175
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> > gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
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