[Kde-accessibility] kttsd and KSayIt etc...

[Robert Vogl]

Hi KDE-Accessibility developers,

my name is Robert Vogl and I'm the originator of the utility KSayIt. Since 
KSayIt is a small frontend for txt2pho and Mbrola Olaf contacted me how we 
could merge together features of KSayIt and kttsd. As a newbie here, I don't 
know the actual state of the discussions and how far the overall KDE TTS 
concept has already been fixed. Anyhow, I would like to offer my suggestions 
in the hope to get some comments. I had a look on the CVS code and I think my 
ideas are not too far away.

I think it's a good idea to design the system as a typical UNIX Client/Server 
architecture. 

1.) kttsd 

In this context kttsd should be designed as a pure server-daemon that offers a 
well defined interface to its clients e.g. via DCOP or IPC-Sockets. The 
interface should receive the text to speak and implements elementary 
functions like 'start', 'stop', 'pause'. All lowlevel functionality like 
queue-handling, prioritization, sentence segmentation or whatever should be 
addressed to the daemon to keep the clients as simple as possible. As a 
daemon kttsd is completely invisible for the user (like KDEs sound server 
artsd), i.e. it doesn't require any GUI functionality. The configuration of 
kttsd should be performed via a KDE Controllcenter Module (KCM) and a set of 
plugins for the several existing TTS systems. The KCM may offer a checkbox of 
type: "Start kttsd on KDE startup".

The runtime control of kttsd may be performed by a stand-alone tool named 
'kttscontrol' (in the style of artscontrol). GUI and functionality of that 
tool is essentially the dialog that pops up if "restore" of the todays system 
tray of kttsd was clicked.

2.) KSayIt

Because a server alone makes no sense we need a bunch of clients. KSayIt 
easily could be reimplemented as a client for the above described kttsd. It's 
located in the system tray to speak the content of the clipboard by a single 
mouse click and can also offer the simple editor view like today. The setup 
dialog is no longer required as well as the speaker stuff since both is 
delegated to kttsd and its KCM.

So far my proposals for today.

Bye,

-- 
Robert Vogl
voglrobe at web.de