From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Raman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacspeak and UTF-8 -- possible? Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:47:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1187041629.914642.48950@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com> References: <1186169058.124273.9230@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <87sl6viq3s.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> <87r6mc6jtm.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1187074860 4782 80.91.229.12 (14 Aug 2007 07:01:00 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:01:00 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Aug 14 09:00:59 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IKqOf-0002s3-AK for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:00:57 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IKqOe-0002mq-Te for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:00:56 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 43 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 172.24.81.46 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1187041630 26612 127.0.0.1 (13 Aug 2007 21:47:10 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:47:10 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Emacs-w3m/1.4.206 w3m/0.5.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com; posting-host=172.24.81.46; posting-account=ps2QrAMAAAA6_jCuRt2JEIpn5Otqf_w0 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:150952 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:00:39 -0400 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:46526 Archived-At: > > > PS: How ironic that Emacspeak provides "the first really functional > interface on Linux for [blind and] VI users". ;-) It actually was a first in helping blind users run VI independently on a workstation console --- thanks to the wonders of eterm.el in Emacs 19.26 --- which for the first time made curses-based apps runnable in an Emacs Term. As for the character coding issues --- I forcibly set EMACS_UNIBYTE to T in the Emacspeak setup files a few years ago to make it clear that the UTF-8 piece needed work. Doing anything else would just cause bizarre/rude surprizes half-way while one is working. Now, when you have a system like Emacs itself which attracts a large number of developers, it is possible to enable something as complex as character encoding and translation and over time debug all of the issues --- we've seen this happen in the case of mainline Emacs over the last 8 years. However, Emacspeak does not have this luxury, and pretending that multibyte support works when it doesn't would only lead to large amounts of frustration and support questions of the form "why doesnt xxx ." on the mailing list. For the record, it should be possible to now add multibyte support by carefully binding buffer-encoding in the scratch buffer used to transform text and by setting process-encoding for that buffer before streaming out the text to the TTS process. But doing this will require: A) Manpower Cycles(ramanpower cycles are vanishingly small for this) B) Ability to test --- TTS engines, multibyte texts, and someone who uses it C) Early users who are sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to bear the pain, identify problems, and and define solutions --Raman