Language selection in speechd-el

[Pierre Lorenzon]

Hi Milan,

Thanks alot for your answer ! As usual things are clear and
there's a good reason even if I can not guess it everytimes ! 


From: Milan Zamazal <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: Language selection in speechd-el
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:25:49 +0100

> >>>>> "PL" == Pierre Lorenzon <devel at pollock-nageoire.net> writes:
> 
>     PL> 1. If I'am not wrong current-input-method is something that must
>     PL> be selected manually by the user. Simply tell me if I read emacs
>     PL> documentation too fast !!! 
> 
> I personally set input method mostly automatically in my mode hooks,
> based (indeed) on the buffer coding, file names etc.
> 
>     PL> But for instance coding systems is something that is guessed by
>     PL> emacs with respect to the buffer content and more or less
>     PL> reflecting the language you are using. I would consider as
>     PL> natural then to offer a mapping between coding systems and
>     PL> languages in speechd-el. I think that I is not something very
>     PL> complicated to implement, simply creating an alis just like
>     PL> speechd-speak-input-method-languages but mapping coding systems
>     PL> on languages and that must be checked at the appropriate
>     PL> location in the code.
> 
> I think that although this would be easy to implement it would be out of
> speechd-el scope.  There are more things you may want to set based on
> buffer coding (language), for example an input method or a spell checker
> dictionary.  So IMHO it would be better to provide a general mechanism,
> not specific to speechd-el, for language guessing.  Then you could set
> speechd-language easily within this mechanism.

  Sure ! 

> 
>     PL> 2. More surprisingly I tried to use mapping between faces and
>     PL> voices via speechd-face-voices variable. When I change
>     PL> (manually) current-input-method in a buffer, language is changed
>     PL> accordingly speechd-speak-input-method-languages but not for
>     PL> pieces of text displayed whith faces mapped to special voices !
>     PL> Why ? I must confess that I do not understand this priority
>     PL> schedule. In my opinion, face does not depend on the language as
>     PL> input-method do : hence language determined by input-method
>     PL> should override that determined by face.
> 
> The idea is that it may help handling multilingual buffers.  For
> instance Emacs doesn't provide general mechanism for message
> translations so you may encounter English pieces of text in non-English
> buffers.  A typical examples might be Info or w3m-el.  In such cases you
> can map faces known to contain English texts to English.  speechd-el
> does something similar with echo area where only English texts are
> expected.
> 
> But if you'd prefer to override face language settings with
> speechd-speak-input-method-languages settings, I can add an option for
> it.  Just tell me.

  Yes there are situations where the buffer is multilingual and
  I do aggre that in these cases the priority schedule is the
  good one. But anyway, there are also cases where the buffer
  is monolingual and where there are several pieces with
  different status and it will be very good to have an idea of
  these various status through a speech difference. The
  situation can be language independant. For instance in a
  w3m.el buffer somme pieces are url, clickable buttons and so
  on. 

  So to sum up I would greatly appreciate that the user have
  more control on the priority schedule : allowing face to
  control the language when necessary but let the connection
  control it for instance when desired. 

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Milan Zamazal

  Bests

  Pierre