[sugar] Some programming problems wrt XO and speech synthesis

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi Hemant,

On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 01:19 +0530, Hemant Goyal wrote:
Hi,
> 
> These are a few issues I want to tackle with respect to
speech-synthesis on the XO:
> Provide a Play button on the top right corner of the sugar shell. (How
can i integrate the button there?)
>      1. When the user clicks it becomes a resume button. (Where do i
write code for handling these clicks? Any specific files of sugar?)
>      2. When the button is clicked the text on the clipboard is sent
through the speech-dispatcher for speech synthesis. (I 'll simply use
the gtk clipboard api for this)
>      3. If the user hovers on the button for long, a palette appears
exposing the speech synthesis parameters. It has sliders for changing
rate,pitch and volume and a drop down box for choosing the voice.

I think these points should be discussed first of all with Eben. He is
in charge of the user experience in the XO.

Once this has been clarified, count on me for directions about where to
hack in Sugar.

>      4. These configuration settings must be stored in some place on
the XO so that they can be retrieved when the XO reboots, or the palette
is shown again. 

In a file inside ~/.sugar/default, perhaps?

>      5. How can I automate the process of connecting to the
speech-dispatcher when the XO boots, and load all the configuration
settings?

Which component would connect to the speech-dispatcher at boot time?

What about speech-dispatcher being a daemon that is autolaunched when
someone first tries to connect to it, and shuts down itself X minutes
after the last request?

>      6. When the palette disappears the new settings are stored in
some location so that they can be retrieved when the xo reboots or the
palette pops up again.

Is this the same as 4?

>      7. I have opened a ticket for inclusion of speech-dispatcher on
the XO and hope the request will be accepted soon:
http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6284
> 
> I am afraid I dont have much experience with programming to solve the
above problems. Any ideas would be great pointers!

Would be great if you could complement with someone else from the
community. I think to remember that other people were also interested in
speech synthesis on the XO?

This seems to me as a great feature to have for update.2 or 3!

Cheers,

Tomeu