[Emacspeak] Re: Mac server python version requirements, go version and intro

[Bart Bunting <bart@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Robert,
I don’t think there’s any issue in upping the python version if it
makes things work better.
I’m not seeing sluggishness at this end. There are other issues, but
responsiveness seems quite good and I have also not seen the audio
issues your patch addresses.
 I am still running emacspeak 56 though with its corresponding Mac server.
Anyway, if you have anything you want tested I’m happy to give it a spin.
It’s been quite a few years since I’ve looked at the Mac server code.
But to try and answer your question the echo stuff was put in to use
socks to add extra voice effects. As with the Mac server there weren’t
many options. In terms of parameters you could tweak to get different
axis For oral stylesheets.

Still trying to work out why I can’t run the latest version of
emacspeak on the Mac but I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of that.
Regards

Bart

> On 9 Feb 2023, at 11:25 am, Robert Melton via Emacspeak <emacspeak(a)emacspeak.org> wrote:
>
> Raman--
>
>
>> 1. You should not let things like "build chains " etc guide your
>>  exploration
>
> Great point!  I should have been more clear in my concerns.  My concerns
> were around getting the contribution into mainline Emacspeak.  I want to
> make something that can be shipped "in the box" with Emacspeak.
>
>
>> 2.  All the new language platforms, rust, go etc (heck even Haskell)
>>   have a large eco-system of libs and build chains...
>
> Haha, I agree, but I really want to lower the barrier of entry an inch or
> two if I can.  The usability gap between Emacspeak and anything else
> I have tried in the last year is -- astonishing.  I really want to bring more
> low vision and blind users into the fold.  Using VSCode was extremely
> painful... I tried hooking Kakoune up to the mac server before I really
> understood anything, that was an abject failure.
>
>
>
>> 3. So by all means experiment with a server written in Go; though I fail
>>  to understand why it would be performant
>
> I have been considering this a lot.  Specifically what causes the lag in the
> python code.  I have yet to really trace it down, but it assuredly is there,
> when digging through lines with swiper (what a great plugin BTW) I can
> end up with a good few seconds of backlogged audio icons.  I am starting
> to think it has to do with the objective c delegate callbacks for completions
> stacking up and blocking (which even would stop processing on incoming
> stdin till they unwind).
>
> Part of the case for Go can be made for async/await as well -- which is just
> the ability to do something else while waiting on IO.  However go has some
> other real nice features for audio playback, soft-realtime GC, true threading
> across multiple threads with no dreaded, yet unduly vilified, GIL.  The way
> Go does interfaces well and cross platform support and building is also insanely
> useful for something that might have a lot of pluggable TTS and audio play
> systems. Go is a good fit for this problem domain, great at doing lots of
> things at once and reacting to stuff in flight.
>
> Honestly, I think the right answer is probably "why not both?"  I think I will
> continue on the Python fixes for now -- as it is a fully functional server and
> I have major things I do not understand about how the commands work as
> of yet... is there a list of effects like echo and other stuff I could reference
> for example.
>
>
>> P.S. You're a breath of fresh air -- really appreciate your openness to
>> learning new things and for your fix to the Mac Server yesterday.
>
> Thanks!  Happy to be part community so open to contributions.  I hope
> to ship another fix and possibly a requirements.txt so people can install
> the deps with one command... possibly even follow the lead of the other
> servers "make mac" would validate and install what is required.
>
> --
> Robert "robertmeta" Melton
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