Re: [orca-list] orca and speech-dispatcher

[Tomas Cerha <cerha brailcom org>]

Dne 8.12.2010 16:17, Michael Whapples napsal(a):
> 1. When orca creates its speech-dispatcher client it could explicitly
> set its priority level so making it unaffected by changes in
> speech-dispatcher or speechd.conf. This should be very simple to do and
> I could easily create a patch in minutes (I guess). If going down this
> route what level would be suggested? I think from reading
> speech-dispatcher documentation it would probably be message although
> important seems to be the current default orca has been designed around.
> Setting the level to message would allow only output with priority
> important to interrupt orca and would maintain the current behaviour
> that multiple outputs from orca would be queued rather than the later
> ones interrupting the earlier ones. Speech-dispatcher documentation
> indicates important should be used rarely as nothing can interrupt it.

Yes, I believe setting to 'message' is the correct way to go.

> 2. Orca could make greater use of the priority levels of
> speech-dispatcher. This might be a better solution as it would mean that
> its output would be considered in importance to other applications
> producing speech output. The difficulty would be, is orca designed in
> such a way that priorities could be set for each call of speak? How much
> work would it be for this to be supported? I imagine it might be quite a
> bit of work.

Yes, you are perfectly right.  Priorities could be used to simplify orca code, but this 
needs some hacking and refacroting.  Ideally, we would extend the current orca speech 
API in a way, that other speech backends would have a chance to implement the new 
extensions as well (to avoid direct dependency on the Speech Dispatcher API throughout 
Orca code).  This is on my TODO list for quite some time now, but the immediate benefit 
is low and the cost is high.  It brings no user visible improvement apart for a few new 
bugs.  On the other hand, it can be done step by step.

Best regards, Tomas