Hi Raman,
I'm not sure how to phrase this question, so please try and bare with me. It is probably more a philosophical question rather than a technical one and I'd be interested in your perspective.
One of the things I love about Emacs, apart from Emacspeak of course, is the power it gives you to create an environment which fits with you rather than being forced to fit with the tool. However, in recent times, I'm finding I seem to be fighting with Emacspeak more and more rather than working with it.
In some cases, this is because you have introduced new functionality into Emacspeak, which while good, is either in conflict with similar functionality I've developed myself or sometimes conflicts with functionality I have. This leaves me in the situation where either I need to change my configuration or workflow to fit with how Emacspeak solves the problem or I have to try and disable the Emacspeak functionality. This has become particularly evident with the addition of muggles for example.
The other area which is increasingly becoming a challenge is with key bindings. As Emacspeak has added more and more functionality, it has used more and more key bindings and changed more key bindings. I frequently find I need to remove various Emacspeak key bindings in order to free up keys I can use for my own purposes - often this is for Emacspeak functionality I don't use or need. Sometimes, it feels like Emacspeak is becoming too invasive.
I realise this is a big challenge. You want to produce a good solution and you want to do something which users of varying skills and interests can use. At the same time, you are working with a base system which is by definition very configurable and has a huge list of extensions and add on packages, many of varying quality. Then you need to balance things so that the list is not swamped with questions about how to use X with emacspeak etc. All of which means it will be largely impossible to suit everyone all of the time.
So here are my questions
1. What is your advice on how to work with Emacspeak but retain the ability to customize the environment to suit my needs? As an example, how can I disable/remove some of the muggles which either are very similar to hydras I already have or which I don't want/need and free up the keys?
2. Have you thought about making Emacspeak more modular and allowing more control for the user to pick the modules or functionality they want?
3. If the answer to 2 is yes, but time/resources are too scarce, is there something I can assist with? If you have an idea or a plan, I would be happy to try working on it when I can.
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