Current Roadmap

[Rui Batista]

Hi,

My comments and ideas:
Ter, 2010-08-10 ?s 12:54 +0200, Hynek Hanke escreveu:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm sending a *proposal* for the roadmap of Speech Dispatcher
> development:
> 
> * Release 0.7.1
> 
> We plan to finish the 0.7.1 release by the end of August.
> There are still some minor things to finish as was described
> in my previous email.
> 
> Improvements it will bring:
>      * Bugfixes, particularly memory leaks
>      * Clever autospawn & improved error reporting
>      * Fully flexible configuration of the client connection method
>      * Patches from Debian and Ubuntu packages are merged upstream
> 
> Thanks for all your contributions.
> 
> We plan to possibly continue this branch with a 0.7.2 release
> if new fixes and features arise that should be released fast.
> 
There are a couple of memory leac fixes and small tweaks in OpenTTS I
supose can be integrated in this version easely, the thing is finding
someone to do that... 
I don't know if voxin's patches to the IBMTTS module were applied or not
but if not they are critical. I'm talking about those regarding
punctuation and ssml.

> * Release 0.8
> 
> We should plan to start working on the 0.8 release fully just
> after the 0.7.1 release is out, this likely means from September.
> 
> Major proposed improvements include:
> 
>      * DBUS interface including a new communication protocol

Good!

>      * ConsoleKit integration

What improovements this will bring? I don't know much about consolekit
so I'm asking :)

>      * Rework of the settings mechanism to use DConf/GSettings

I don't know if it is really necessary but I'm not a fan of dotconf
either.

>      * Separate compilation and distribution of modules
> 
This is good. Getting ride of the add-module directive seems good too.
Kind of a autodetection of modules is good, like detection of plugins on
some softwares.

My additions:

* Add internationalization support like we did on OpenTTS and setup a
translation effort.
* On the code cleanup part, I propose adapting the audiosystem
reorganization of OpenTTS to make possible creating audiodrivers out of
speech-dispatcher tree. This is good for embeded systems with custom
audio systems. I'm 
* This is *not very prioritary* but rewriting the pulseaudio driver
using the assync api can give improovements. This is not easy and the
current driver is good, but we can do better.
* Implementing the part of TTS-API regarding audioretrieval can be
really useful but just an idea.

> We will begin the 0.8 cycle with a major code cleanup as this
> has become necessary after the development and numerous
> reworks due to changes in design decisions in the past. We must
> eliminate tabs, re-indent and re-format the code and rename some
> internal functions and variables in a consistent manner, move some
> functions into separate files. This will be coordinated on the mailing
> list to avoid merge conflicts, but your cooperation will be most welcome.
> We will first setup guidelines and then stick to them.
> 
> We will first make a brief analysis of what needs to be done for
> proper session integration with ConsoleKit and DBUS communication.
> It is very likely that it will turn out that we will benefit greatly
> from conversion from our own select-based mainloop to the
> GLib mainloop and converting to GThreads instead of pthreads.
> 
I like the glib-mainloop aproach but don't know if it would make things
harder to maintain. On the other hand integrating it with d-bus is much
easier.

> The new DBUS interface will offer the same functionality
> as SSIP but should already be designed in a way that it
> can be later extended to the new high level API based on
> TTS API and being able to support additional requirements
> we have on the API on top of what SSIP already supports.
> Thus we will first need to develop the specification for it
> and then implement it.

The specification is the most important part and, if possible, Orca and
some other people must review and give ideas to that. 

> 
> The work required will be identified by the 0.8 analysis,
> then we can decide on the breakdown of work and time
> schedules.
> 
> If you have some suggestions or proposals, we would like
> to hear them. Of course when I say ''we'', I always mean
> Brailcom and all other contributors involved in the project.
> 
Good! I like to hear this. :)

> In the meantime, Brailcom is reworking the Free(b)Soft website
> so that it can include better communication tools and a new section
> for the Speech Dispatcher development, including the roadmap and
> a wiki. We are also working on setting up the bug tracking system
> we have informed about earlier. The website is also going to include
> a user-oriented section on the accessibility tools, which we are currently
> missing. These features will however come gradually, not all at once,
> according to our possibilities :)
> 
If you need some help please ask, I'm not an expert on web development
but have installed some instances of trac, wikis and some other stuff.

Best regards,

Rui Batista


> Best regards,
> Hynek Hanke
> 
> 
> 
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