Re: [orca-list] Orca: how to change voice dynamically

[Willie Walker <walker willie gmail com>]

Hi All:

Please take a look at these two bugs:

Add the ability to switch languages:  
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419742
Orca should support multi-lingual  
text:https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=400717

The first has to do with a single language for a complete utterance,  
the second has to do with handling a single utterance that contains  
text from more than one locale.

The AT-SPI allows you to determine some locale information for the  
entire application:

http://git.gnome.org/browse/at-spi/tree/idl/ 
Accessibility_Application.idl#n107

However, the AT-SPI does not provide anything to allow you detect a  
language switch mid-string (e.g., "Mon dieu, Joanie's blog at  
http://blog.grain-of-salt.com/ brought a tear to my eye.").

Having said that, a big problem we deal with is that the notion of  
representing a locale/language in a machine readable format differs  
from speech engine to speech engine.  So, eSpeak might express US  
English one way, DECtalk another, etc.  gnome-speech was never modified  
to properly normalize the locale representation to the POSIX standard,  
and I'm not sure what SpeechDispatcher does.

So, I would suggest tackling this problem first at the speech layer  
(e.g., make sure SpeechDispatcher exposes the locale using an  
appropriate standard) and then tackling it inside Orca.  I think this  
is a rather tractable problem, but just needs someone to do the work.

Will

On Feb 8, 2010, at 7:30 AM, Halim Sahin wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I want to write down some notes about the dynamic language changing
> stuff.
>
> 1. Changing the language without an userinteraction is one of the
> features which are turned of in my windows screenreader because it
> is not working reliable for websites.
> Some times I am getting english synthesis with german text etc.
> Sure this is a problem of those websites but there are many of such
> broken sites in the web.
>
> I can't think of an usefull usecase for such a feature for other
> appsbecause it needs heavy change in orca and it's use shouldn't bring
> slowdowns or other unwanted effect to other users who don't need such a
> feature.
>
> 2. Doing the language stuff for normal desktop applications:
> Detecting the used language would be the first step to  implementing  
> this
> feature.
> This can be difficult:
> e. G. When I don't use german umlauts in my application, the used
> characters are the same as for other languages like english.
> So in this case the language detection can fail.
> Is there a way to detect the used Lang in such cases?
>
> 3. Detecting the language could be done using some language dependant
> dictionaries but this would slow down the workflow in orca.
>
> 4. Another problem is that orca translates e. G. Interpunction
> characters to the
> selected systemlanguage (locale based).
> changing only the synthesizer wouldn't be enough!
> When implementing the dynamic peechanguage  in orca the locale based
> translation needs to be
> changed.
> Orca must handle the language stuff this way that a aplication can
> switch the used orca-language (completely).
>
> Please try to make such changes configurable!!!
> Regards
> halim
>
>
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