Re: [orca-list] Built in Controls for Espeak Pretty Please with Sugar, cheeries, whatever it takes on top :)

[Kyle <kyle4jesus gmail com>]

I was initially very happy with the Espeak features that would be
exposed by adding a driver to Orca that would interface directly with
the synthesizer. I would still love to be able to use these features. On
the other hand, I do see a couple of compelling arguments for fixing up
speech-dispatcher, assuming it's possible to expose features like Espeak
variants from within the current infrastructure. Probably the most
compelling argument I've heard thus far is the modularity that allows
many applications to speak, and the ability for these applications to
reuse existing code rather than having to start from scratch, as I use
these principles myself as I do development work for Linux distros.

As I think about how Sonar came to be where it is today, I notice  just
how much of these software engineering principles came into play, and
just how much of an impact they can have on the finished product and the
time it takes to finish it. Sonar started out based on Ubuntu, but there
were some obstacles that arose from the underlying codebase, as we
really wanted to feature the latest and greatest accessibility using the
latest versions of GNOME and Orca. Using Ubuntu as a base would have
meant setting up our own PPA with the latest GNOME packages, which would
have taken a lot more time to even get something somewhat usable
working. Thankfully, just as we were starting to find out how to make
new packages to drop into the PPA, we found Manjaro, which being based
on the excellent Arch Linux codebase, gave us the latest packages and
the ability to reuse a lot more build code. Now as I work on another
project that is converting to the same base, I find that it takes a lot
less time to reuse what is already available and just modify it to make
it work with the new Manjaro system than it would have been to start all
this from scratch. Given the fact that my work is on the distro/build
level rather than lower level code, the time savings of reusing existing
packages, scripts and everything else and only modifying things where
necessary is indescribable compared with starting from scratch, and
certainly allows 1 or 2 people to do much more than what 100 to 200
people could do if they had to start from scratch. The Orca and
speech-dispatcher projects are a lot smaller than an entire distro, but
still can benefit significantly from the time and work savings
associated with reusing as much modular code as possible. Should a
driver for Espeak be taken completely off the table? Probably not, as it
would still do a lot for Espeak users, and hopefully not at a
considerable cost of time or effort. However, if speech-dispatcher can
be reworked to add support for the larger feature set, and if its bugs
can be fixed and more synthesizer drivers can be made available for use
in speech-dispatcher, even at considerable cost of time and effort, many
more applications can benefit from the investment.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"