From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tim X Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacspeak and UTF-8 -- possible? Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:39:51 +1000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <87myx06j88.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> References: <1186169058.124273.9230@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <87sl6viq3s.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au> <87tzr9vbf7.fsf@comcast.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1186731594 21970 80.91.229.12 (10 Aug 2007 07:39:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 07:39:54 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Aug 10 09:39:50 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 1IJP65-0002lk-LQ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:39:49 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IJP65-0005Dj-6k for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:39:49 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!newsfeed.freenet.de!feeder.news-service.com!216.196.110.148.MISMATCH!border1.nntp.ams.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!sn-xt-ams-06!sn-xt-ams-04!sn-ams!sn-feed-ams-01!sn-post-ams-02!sn-post-sjc-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:BjbDOZQLmjZ+X3+wvYrPmPXsHu4= Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Original-Lines: 39 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:150884 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:38:24 -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:46460 Archived-At: "Robert D. Crawford" writes: > Stefan Monnier writes: > >>> Emacspeak AFAIK doesn't support multi-byte characters. The problem is >>> that many speech synthesises, particularly older hardware based ones like >>> the dectalk, don't understand UTF-8 character sets. If you send them >>> a multibyte character, they either lock up, speak garbage or do something >>> else unexpected. >> >> That's not a good reason to prevent display of any other char. > > Does any other char mean UTF-8? If this is the case, wouldn't you agree > that it is better to not have UTF-8 support than to not be able to use > the computer because your speech synth locks up unexpectedly and often? > The problem is a lack of familiarity with how emacspeak achieves what it does so simply. As you would know, making emacspeak support other encodings would involve a complete re-write of its internals - in fact, a whole new translation layer would be required in order to enable full support of emacs' supported character encodings *and* support both TTS engines that do and do not support encodings other than ASCII. I suspect that in order to keep it as flexible as it is now with respect to how little is required to support various add on packages, a totally new architecture would be required. This is also likely to introduce additional processing overhead which could easily degrade the real time responsiveness to the point where the system is not usable, particularly when using some of the free TTS engines, which already are only just acceptable with respect to responsiveness. Stefan makes some valuable contributions, especially to this group, but in this instance, his opinion is not based on anything of substance and contributes nothing of relevance. Tim