[Emacspeak] Re: Announcing Emacspeak 58.0 (ErgoDog)

[Robert Melton <lists@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 1. Step back from the nitty-gritty of your server and study the code
>   in the outloud and dtk servers.

Good recommendation, I have started to dig through DTK, but haven't 
looked at outloud at all. I am dodging lisp less and less these days as 
daily use of it is starting to make it click. 


>   2. Put aside any negativ impressions of the Python Mac server that
>      are likely more the result of Apple TTS API churn -- that Python
>      server has been around a while and worked welluage issue...

Ha, please excuse any dramatics on that front, I was just very 
frustrated with my day to day at that point. Python 3 is my favorite 
mainstream language, and my swiftmac server is a loving port of
the python server. 

Python 3 (with asyncio and type hints) is my primary language now. 

The python server will need some updates due to libraries starting 
to be depreciated and ideally to take advantage of new python 3 
features which could reduce the LOCs a great deal, but it and 
Python are great. 


>      3. Study the Apple TTS API bindings swift, python etc to see
>         what they make available, there may well be new things there
>         that if correctly used will make the task easier.
> 

This is where a lot of my time has been spent, and just breaking the 
TTS using little scripts from terminal over and over again, so much 
so I setup a new mac mini cause I loathe rebooting my main rig. 

The next real step is to switch to the new more modern set of TTS 
APIs that Apple has released, this will require hand implementing 
of all embeds and switching to an entirely new model, but this is
the more supported (read: used on iPhone) stack now. 


>         4. Finally return to building your server. Note that David
>            Tseng contributed some patches recently to the Mac Python
>            server that may also have fixed some of the issues
>            introduced by later versions of the Mac OS-Level TTS
>            layer.

I will have to revisit it and check it out, I still jump into it from time to 
time when I break swiftmac horribly in testing, amazing to have a 
backup a few keypresses away. 


>            And finally, remember you're writing this for fun, if
>            you've forgotten that, keep reminding yourself of that
>            every day so you enjoy implementing it; so as an example,
>            dont chase deadlines etc, your day job, whatever that is
>            will give you plenty of that if you need that:)
> 

Indeed, it is for fun, but it is also something I feel I must contribute
back to and help where I can! Honestly, the importance of 
Emacspeak to lowering my frustration with using my computer is 
impossible at this point to overstate and I am still barely scratching
the surface. Being able to code without it being a brutally painful 
process is -- just so important.

I came to Emacspeak as a last resort, I was literally at that point 
thinking of switching careers entirely and this let me stay in it and
actually recover a huge chunk of my former capabilities and I am 
still learning stuff almost everyday.  query-replace, occur and 
narrowing are the three things I am leveraging the most right now.
And binding l-shift and r-shift to search has fixed my ergo problems
with the built-in bindings for search. 

-- 
Robert "robertmeta" Melton