Emacspeak discussion list

[Tim Cross <theophilusx AT gmail.com>]

Hi Robert,

this looks like a great contribution. Thank you.

Robert Melton <lists AT robertmelton.com> writes:

> Parham—
>
> This is great, I have been working on a little repo to support stuff like 
> this that hasn’t
> hit mainline yet, I guess now is as good as any a time to announce it.
>
> https://github.com/robertmeta/emacspeak-support
>
> Just a collection of support scripts for emacspeaks and a little framing. 
>
>
>
>> On Dec 26, 2025, at 20:09, Tim Cross (via emacspeak Mailing List) 
>> <emacspeak AT emacspeak.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Parham,
>> 
>> as this can be a moving target, can you indicate which version of helm
>> and emacs you fixed this bug on? I don't use helm, but want to make sure
>> anyone else seing this post can check to see what version of emacs and
>> helm they are running as I know that we often have a very wide range of
>> versions being used on this list, including quite a lot of people
>> running old versions of everything as 'if it ain't broke' philosophy.
>> 
>> I'm assuming yur running the last commit of emacspeak as wsell (and not
>> the last 'official' release)
>> 
>> Tim
>> 
>> "Parham Doustdar" (via emacspeak Mailing List) <emacspeak AT emacspeak.net> 
>> writes:
>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> I have been facing a couple of issues with helm help that I finally got 
>>> around to identifying and fixing, patch is at the end of the email. 
>>> Basically, there are two issues:
>>> The first is that as you try to navigate around in helm help, Emacspeak 
>>> keeps reading the helm help default prompt. So, you hear the main text at 
>>> the same time as the notification stream is reading the prompt.
>>> Second issue is that, because Helm has its own command dispatcher in the 
>>> helm help mode, the Emacspeak prefix key doesn’t work.
>>> The fix:
>>> 1. Emacspeak is advising helm help mode, but the helm help 
>>> mode-before-hook is actually being called on a different buffer than the 
>>> *helm help* buffer. As a result, when Emacspeak tries to turn off 
>>> emacspeak-speak-messages, nothing happens. The right way to do this seems 
>>> to be to advise the helm-help-event-loop directly.
>>> 2. The read-key advice doesn’t actually take the emacspeak-speak-messages 
>>> variable into account when speaking the prompt. As a result, after fixing 
>>> the issue above, the prompt still keeps getting spoken when you navigate. 
>>> To fix that, I added a simple check to the read-key advice to check for 
>>> emacspeak-speak-messages before it speaks.
>>> 3. Finally, since this help loop is a custom thing, the Emacspeak prefix 
>>> key doesn’t work. So I added our own dispatcher to the helm help keymap.
>>> ---
>>> lisp/emacspeak-advice.el | 24 +++++++++++++-----------
>>> lisp/emacspeak-helm.el   | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++------
>>> 2 files changed, 34 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)
>>> 
>>> diff --git a/lisp/emacspeak-advice.el b/lisp/emacspeak-advice.el
>>> index 0a72e7859..a052c6bc5 100644
>>> --- a/lisp/emacspeak-advice.el
>>> +++ b/lisp/emacspeak-advice.el
>>> @@ -936,23 +936,25 @@
>>>  (eval
>>>   `(defadvice ,f (before emacspeak pre act comp)
>>>      "Speak prompt"
>>> +     (when emacspeak-speak-messages
>>>       (let ((prompt (ad-get-arg 0)))
>>>         (emacspeak-icon 'char)
>>>         (setq emacspeak-last-message prompt)
>>>         (setq emacspeak-read-char-prompt-cache prompt)
>>> -        (tts-with-punctuations 'all (dtk-notify (or prompt "key")))))))
>>> +        (tts-with-punctuations 'all (dtk-notify (or prompt "key"))))))))
>>> 
>>> (defadvice read-char-choice (before emacspeak pre act comp)
>>>   "Speak the prompt. "
>>> -  (let* ((prompt (ad-get-arg 0))
>>> -         (chars (ad-get-arg 1))
>>> -         (m
>>> -          (format
>>> -           "%s: %s"
>>> -           prompt
>>> -           (mapconcat #'(lambda (c) (format "%c" c)) chars ", "))))
>>> -    (ems--log-message m)
>>> -    (tts-with-punctuations 'all (dtk-speak m))))
>>> +  (when emacspeak-speak-messages
>>> +    (let* ((prompt (ad-get-arg 0))
>>> +           (chars (ad-get-arg 1))
>>> +           (m
>>> +            (format
>>> +             "%s: %s"
>>> +             prompt
>>> +             (mapconcat #'(lambda (c) (format "%c" c)) chars ", "))))
>>> +      (ems--log-message m)
>>> +      (tts-with-punctuations 'all (dtk-speak m)))))
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ;;;  advice completion functions to speak:
>>> diff --git a/lisp/emacspeak-helm.el b/lisp/emacspeak-helm.el
>>> index bd9f3274f..f721fe849 100644
>>> --- a/lisp/emacspeak-helm.el
>>> +++ b/lisp/emacspeak-helm.el
>>> @@ -122,19 +122,26 @@
>>>     (emacspeak-speak-line)))
>>> 
>>> ;;;  Support helm-help
>>> -(add-hook
>>> - 'helm-help-mode-before-hook
>>> - #'(lambda()
>>> -     "Turn off speaking read-key prompts"
>>> -     (setq emacspeak-speak-messages nil)
>>> -     (emacspeak-icon 'open-object)))
>>> -
>>> -(add-hook
>>> - 'helm-help-mode-after-hook
>>> - #'(lambda()
>>> -     "restore speaking messages."
>>> -     (setq emacspeak-speak-messages t)
>>> -     (emacspeak-icon 'close-object)))
>>> +
>>> +(defadvice helm-help-event-loop (around emacspeak pre act comp)
>>> +  "Silence messages during helm help loop."
>>> +  (setq emacspeak-speak-messages nil)
>>> +  (emacspeak-icon 'open-object)
>>> +  (unwind-protect
>>> +      ad-do-it
>>> +    (setq emacspeak-speak-messages t)
>>> +    (emacspeak-icon 'close-object)))
>>> +
>>> +(defun emacspeak-helm-help-dispatch-prefix ()
>>> +  "Dispatch C-e prefix commands in helm help."
>>> +  (interactive)
>>> +  (let* ((key (read-key-sequence-vector (format "%s " (key-description 
>>> emacspeak-prefix))))
>>> +         (cmd (lookup-key emacspeak-keymap key)))
>>> +    (when (commandp cmd)
>>> +      (call-interactively cmd))))
>>> +
>>> +(with-eval-after-load 'helm-lib
>>> +  (helm-help-define-key (key-description emacspeak-prefix) 
>>> #'emacspeak-helm-help-dispatch-prefix))
>>> 
>>> (provide 'emacspeak-helm)
>>> ;;;  end of file
>>> 
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