Re: [orca-list] Orca: Support for Multilingual text

[Joanmarie Diggs <joanmarie diggs gmail com>]

Hi Leena.

Thanks again for your interest in Orca. Regarding this:

> As we have explored Orca for Multiple-language support:
>       * eSpeak is default synthesiser used by Orca and eSpeak has good
>         support for English and basic support for other alternative
>         languages. List includes some indian languages also (hindi,
>         tamil). 
>       * Can Orca be extended for Multilingual text support? Means if
>         document has text in multiple languages then Orca should
>         automatically read in that language.  
>       * Available TTS can be included in list of eSpeak. 
>       * Found bugs: 
>         
>         Bug 419742- Add the ability to switch languages
>         
>         Bug 400717- Orca should support multi-lingual text. 
>         
> Inputs are required, so that Support for Multilingual text using Orca
> can be extended.

With respect to the first bug, as suggested by Damian in his response to
you, and as indicated on the bug, the plan is to add the ability to
quickly (i.e. via a single keystroke) cycle between the languages. This
will in many cases be the preferred solution for users because, as Halim
pointed out, often the language is not identified -- or is incorrectly
identified -- in the document being accessed. So we need to make it easy
for the user who has identified the language to immediately switch to
that language when and if desired.

The implementation of this solution will, I believe, be very different
-- and much simpler -- once the fix for this other bug [1] has been put
into place by the guys from Emergya who have joined the Orca team. In
fact, that fix might more or less give us the fix to bug 419742 for
free.

A long way of saying bug 419742 is being worked on. There are just
things which need to be implemented first (and which are also being
worked on).

The second bug needs some more thought with respect to the
implementation details, but it's on our to-do list.

Speaking of which, when choosing bugs to work on, it's always a good
idea to see if someone else is working on them first. Ways you can do
this:

* Is it assigned to someone other than "Orca Maintainers"
* Is it blocking the AndalucÃa metabug?
* Are there patches already attached?

In the case of both of the bugs you point out above, they are blocking
the AndalucÃa bug. Therefore, you should assume that someone else is (or
will be) working on them.

Something else I've done recently is mark bugs as 'post-3.0' in the
whiteboard field. 'post-3.0' means the Orca team doesn't have time at
the moment to deal with them given everything else we are working on for
the GNOME 3.0 release. As such, 'post-3.0' bugs are much better
candidates for people looking for ways to contribute to Orca.

Thanks much! Take care.
--joanie

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619745