Re: nvda2speechd, let Windows programs talk through Speech dispatcher

[Linux A11y]

Howdy Rastislav,

This sounds very exiting. Great work, as usual.

Cheers chrys

Von meinem iPhone gesendet

> Am 05.06.2022 um 16:41 schrieb Linux for blind general discussion 
> <blinux-list@redhat.com>:
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I've been dealing a bit recently with Windows games, through various
> means - running them using Wine, VM etc. And I've got a bit... unpleased
> by the state of speech synthesis in Wine. I'm not criticizing it, it's a
> big enough drag to implement a sapi voice in Windows itself, speak of
> getting sapi itself to run on a completely different system, so this is
> completely understandable.
> 
> But that doesn't change anything on the factual usability, where you
> need to deal with a whole speech system in an inaccessible way, which
> doesn't even work in my VM btw, has some noticeable delais (at least
> with the default voices) and is there a way to actually configure it?
> 
> No sarcasm, I don't know.
> 
> 
> Anyway, the usability is inconvenient at best, what is slightly
> disturbing when playing games (especially those where you need quick
> feedback e.g. Swamp).
> 
> 
> But yesterday, I've came up with an idea. On Windows, there is a library
> called nvdaControllerClient32.dll (or 64 for 64-bit programs, likely
> more used by now), which is used by programs and various speech output
> libraries to talk through NVDA.
> 
> 
> The good thing about this library is its absolute simplicity, at least
> in terms of the interface, just 4 functions with elementary datatypes.
> 
> 
> So, what I did, was that I created my own library with exactly the same
> interface in Rust, except that instead of talking to NVDA, it opens a
> connection to a server on Linux, which translates all requests aimed for
> NVDA to Speech dispatcher.
> 
> 
> This way, an app in Wine can use Speech dispatcher!
> 
> 
> All your voices, all your configuration preserved just like you'd be
> running a native app.
> 
> 
> I've tried it and it really works.
> 
> I can't tell right now how good is it, it's just an experiment, the app
> I've tested with worked quite well, but that was just a simple binary
> editor I made long time ago.
> 
> The real test will come, when I manage to download Swamp. I tried about
> 5 times and the download has always failed, I guess there is either high
> traffic on Aprone's servers, or perhaps he has some issues with internet
> connection.
> 
> 
> And for some reason, agarchive.net doesn't seem to have the latest
> version (anyone knows why is that?)
> 
> 
> Anyway, if you feel like playing some Windows game compatible with NVDA,
> and would like the native speech, feel free to try it out:
> 
> https://github.com/RastislavKish/nvda2speechd
> 
> 
> Best regards
> 
> 
> Rastislav
> 
> 
> 
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