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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
Admin
completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
matrix @fastfinge:interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes It is not. I'll push the code changes soon. I assume doing that won't break anything if no translations or translation infrastructure exists? Like, what happens if you set your NVDA to Spanish, but no Spanish translation is available? Does the addon just refuse to load?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@garo @jonathan859 @amir Correct, it will never be in the store. However, if you were using eci.dll version 6.1 with IBM TTS, it will sound identical. We don't currently have an update system because we're currently telling NVDA lies about the current addon version and what NVDA versions it's compatible with. This is both to force the addon to keep loading on newer NVDA versions without an update, and so that the "allow NVDA to gather usage statistics" setting does not allow NVAccess to gather accurate info on the addon.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes Yes, this is the way. Unfortunately I only speak one language, so I can't generate a translation, and I can't switch my NVDA to another language to test the translation. So this work is going to have to fall on someone else, I think. I'm not confident enough in myself to release code I can't really test. I make enough silly mistakes as it is, because I'm not actually good at this and just do it anyway.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes We also aren't technically supposed to host the eloquence dll files on github. That's why the build process is...the way it is. So that when the repo that contains them gets pulled down, we can get them elsewhere with a quick change.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes No, they will not. They also won't allow it in the addon store. So to localize the addon, I need to recreate that or a similar workflow.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes So where do the localization files come from and where do they go? Do translators make them somehow?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes We are not using scons. We are not using the NVDA addon template. We are not using anything even vaguely resembling a sane build system. See build.cmd and build.py and cry. In other words, if it needs to happen, I need to do it myself.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jscholes Thanks! Don't I have to do...something to build pots and poes and then put them...somewhere?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jonathan859 @garo @amir Yes, they do.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@garo @jonathan859 @amir 64 bit eloquence comes with eloquence 6.1 included. So another addon isn't needed. If you want a different version of eloquence, you're out of luck. This is because every single eloquence dll version requires slightly different code to interface with it. I don't have all the different versions, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't test them all. Also, 6.1 is the only version that will work in portable NVDA installations, and has no major bugs. While it doesn't support different sample rates, the extra complexity to bridge every possible eloquence version to 64-bit just isn't worth it for that feature. We did, however, add in support for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese languages.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@jonathan859 @amir The reason I pull from master is because the filename is always the same. It looks like your dictionaries have a different file name for each release, because the .zip file includes the version number, so I can't detect the latest version in an automated way easily. The job for the next release is to schedule the update checks and have an update automatically checkbox. But that requires me learning how NVDA's update checker works, and I wanted to at least get initial support out, plus the indexing fixes.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Do you use on the 64-bit ? If so, a new release is available, and we could use your help! You can find out more info on the release page: github.com/fastfinge/eloquence_64/releases/tag/v4
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@silver_huskey I think even that's going to become less clear as more and more big corporate websites start requiring age verification. Just because your account needs some sort of manual approval is already not really triggering people to think "There's a human in charge somewhere". They're just thinking "Probably some exploited and underpaid contractor in another country has to verify my identity somehow."
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Tooden This has been my frustration with fedi for a while. The majority of us, and I include myself in this, are tech nerds. And tech nerds are historically not good at communicating with non-tech-nerds. But social media is all about communicating! I think this is the primary reason fedi struggles to grow. We make it seem harder than it is, and we kind of blow off people who want to have conversations about things not related to our specific interests. See the way folks interested in sports get treated around here: mostly, they get yelled at and told they shouldn't like sports at all because it's corporate or bad for the environment or politically distasteful. Anyway, let's talk some more about the 47 hard drives I just purchased for my 12th server.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@pwloftus Me, too! Sadly, my admin is a bit of a jerk. But every time I change instances, the guy is still here! LOL
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@heluecht I didn't get into the other software part of things. I was more concerned with helping them understand that racist harassment from users on another instance isn't something they just have to deal with and move on, or if it turns out that it is, they should move somewhere better. Last I heard there admin had been convinced to use the FediNuke Blocklist. seirdy.one/posts/2023/05/02/fediverse-blocklists/
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@treehugger They were brought over by political activism and a fandom space. This is the sort of person who doesn't even own a computer and just uses their phone; they would've just glazed over one, if an explanation was even offered, so they could get on with the things they actually came for.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@Fragglemuppet They talk more about politics than technical stuff. And yeah, it sort of is, but it's much less visible on mobile. Also: remember Myspace Tom? Just because some username and profile photo is shown to you, that doesn't mean they're someone you can interact with. At least not on the big corporate social media.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Huh. Just chatted in person with someone who's been on for a while, now, who honestly thought that all the Mastodon domains were run by Mastodon. And having a different domain was, like, just a vanity thing to look cool. It only came up because they were complaining about an issue they were having, and they were on a smaller server (not naming it for anonymity), so I suggested contacting their server admin about the problem. I was surprised when they answered "Dude nobody at big companies reads those reports. It just all goes to AI or whatever." It took some actual convincing to get them to believe that the server they're on does, in fact, have a living breathing human admin who can be talked to.

Anyway, folks, support your server admins and moderators. With money, where you can. They're almost certainly getting messages from users who think that reporting things to an admin here is exactly like reporting stuff to Facebook or Google. IE: screaming at a giant faceless entity who's never going to care or do anything about whatever your problem is.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@quanin @Rosalyn We were always the other way. If we got a tape that was already rewound it was a half-hour celebration, because it meant that tape was completely new and had never been played by anybody before, so it would actually look and sound decent.