George Bunge
NV Access@TomGrant91 @Georgie Hi Georgie (and Tom) - yes, this is true. For the average user, it shouldn't have much impact. Add-ons may need some work, but that is standard for the first release of the year (and yes that is something separate we are working on addressing as well). We needed to make the move because dependencies we rely on (such as Python) are going 64-bit only. We are working on something for purely 32-bit add-ons like some voices etc.
@NVAccess @TomGrant91 I see. This doesn’t by any chance mean that add-ons won’t have to be updated every year, does it?
@Georgie @TomGrant91 Eventually, that is the plan, yes :) That's not changing immediately though, I was just flagging that we are aware of that annoyance and working on it.
@NVAccess @TomGrant91 I see, that’s great to hear. BTW, have you guys ever considered trying to approach Apple to see if you could get some sort of allowance to use eloquence in NVDA by default? Would be very curious if something like this could even be discussed with whoever owns it now.
@Georgie @TomGrant91 I believe the only option was always for a per-user license for Eloquence. That is currently available for those who want it (see https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/wiki/ExtraVoices#eloquence-sapi-5-voices-from-code-factory ) - but we know our users love their choice of voices so we are always on the lookout for new options (if you know any we don't have on that page - free or paid, please do let us know).
@NVAccess @TomGrant91 Wait, isn’t that the code factory version? I bought that a couple years ago and later discovered that they were no longer going to support it due to constantly having to update the add-ons. I do have eloquence and use an add-on that works so long as you have the library present. I contacted the a cappella group awhile ago about asking them to put their engine on the add-on store, and they gave a very noncommittal answer. Would including eloquence in NVDA for all users even be a possibility? My fear is that we will lose access to eloquence altogether as technology evolves and as no one seems to be actively maintaining the source code, and there isn’t anything quite like it.
@DavidGoldfield @Georgie @TomGrant91 Code Factory have the license to distribute Eloquence (legally). Tiflotecnia also sell it, but it is through Code Factory (Not sure if AT Guys still do, but if they do it will be the same). Code Factory suddenly dropped the add-on a couple of years ago with no warning to anyone. The only version available now is the SAPI5 version. If we were to want to bundle it with NVDA, we would need a per-user license (so tracking, phoning home, etc - and of course, cost)
@NVAccess @DavidGoldfield @TomGrant91 And you don’t think they would be willing to grant NV access the rights to use it? Forgive my saying this, but I believe that it should actually be open source. No one besides blind people is buying it, the NVDA add-on disappeared completely, and it’s not like anyone is developing it any more by adding new languages to it at et cetera. How did Apple manage to include it on their platforms? These questions are probably quite ignorant, so please excuse that.