2014-02-18, 20:17
och. I have both windows and linux working. Unfortunatelly I will only be able to upload it tommorow as the latest working stuff is on my laptop and I've forgotten its charger in the office today. So no real real updates from today.
Edit: Source code of my attempts at xbmc-addons is now on github. Still writing some basic readme so you can set it up.
Edit2: fixed the link
Edit3:
Okay here are things you need to do in order to try out what I am working on.
0) If you are on Windows make sure you have NVDA working. If you wish you can choose to run portable version.
If you are on linux you will have to have speech-dispatcher installed, configure it to use the voice of your choice. It has to be running prior to running XBMC. So for now it is probably a good idea to run XBMC from within the desktop (if you are using orca with gnome or xfce it means you have working enviromment). Speech-dispatcher is packaged for most of the distros including debian, ubuntu, open suse, fedora and arch linux. I don't know the details about the others.
If you are using no screen reader and / or you have no sound from your speech synthesizer then you should get to install and configure one before proceeding further.
1) You will have to have XBMC installed if you are on either of these platforms windows or linux. On windows just download the installer on linux it is verry likelly your distro has XBMC packaged so install it using your prefered package manager. I am on arch linux so I know you can do sudo pacman -S xbmc in the terminal.
2) Launch XBMC eventhough you will have no access to its UI if you are blind. Then try to execute the following steps in the order as I am describing. If you find something different or unexpected please describe it so we can try figure out what might be different and suggest how to make it work for you.
- Press some arrow keys e.g. left, right, up or down. As you are pressing these you should hear clicking sound as you navigate over the controls on the XBMC home screen.
- Try to change to other window e.g. by pressing alt+tab and make sure you can access it using your screen reader. If you are on linux and you do only have single display configured you may have issues switching to other windows while XBMC is in full screen. You can cycle full screen and windowed modes by pressing \ [back slash] key. So if you are unable to switch to other window using alt+tab press the back slash key on your keyboard and retry pressing alt+tab again.
- Now try to change back to the XBMC window and verify you can still navigate XBMC home screen. Again you are looking for the click sound caused as you navigate over the controls.
- Finally try to exit XBMC by pressing ctrl+end on your keyboard.
3) Now you have to install my er... add-ons. If you can see good enough or you have a friend you can ask for help just launch your install of XBMC and navigate to Settings -> Add-ons and in there choose the entry saying something like Instal an add-on from a zip file. Then browse for a zip file downloaded from this post.
You have to install two add-ons. If you are on linux install both these in this order. script.module.speechdispatcher.zip and then script.voicemenus.zip. If you are on windows install the add-ons in this order script.module.nvda.zip and then script.voicemenus.zip.
If you were able to complete this step number 3 then do not execute the next step just read it so you are able to find out xbmc directory and continue with the step 5.
4) Here I assume you are unable to install XBMC Add-ons using the XBMC UI, so I will describe how you can extract them into a proper directory manually so XBMC will be able to load them.
Now you do need to find the XBMC addon directory. On windows press windows+r to display the run dialog and enter "%appdata%\xbmc" without the quotes. On linux navigate to the folder ~/.xbmc .
In the xbmc folder you will see some files and additional subfolders. Enter the addons folder. This is the folder you should extract the addon zip files into.
If you are on linux extract both files script.module.speechdispatcher.zip and script.voicemenus.zip into the addons folder.
If you are on windows extract both files script.module.nvda.zip and script.voicemenus.zip into the addons folder.
5) Now go to the xbmc folder as described at the beginning of the previous step. Inside the xbmc folder find the subfolder named userdata. In the userdata folder either find the keymaps subfolder or if the keymaps folder does not exist at this location then please create it.
Into the keymaps folder copy the file keyboard.xml. If you already have your user specific keyboard.xml in this location then you have to manually merge the two files. If you have ever edited keyboard.xml your-self you might be able to do this without further explanation.
6) Make sure your screen reader / speech-dispatcher is still working as it should and start / restart XBMC. When XBMC starts you should get voiced entries as you navigate over the controls in the home screen inside the various libraries, menus and settings.
There are still many controls where the voice menus don't work. These include dialog windows where you can only navigate over the buttons, media info entries where you can only hear names of media properties, settings where you can only hear control names and not their states and types.
Please ask for more details if you are unsure while performing some of these steps or if something does not work the way you expect it to.
Still if someone can give us more power to make this better I would be glad to receive hints, suggestions etc.
Downloads
script.module.speechdispatcher.zip
script.module.nvda.zip
script.voicemenus.zip
keyboard.xml
Edit: Source code of my attempts at xbmc-addons is now on github. Still writing some basic readme so you can set it up.
Edit2: fixed the link
Edit3:
Okay here are things you need to do in order to try out what I am working on.
0) If you are on Windows make sure you have NVDA working. If you wish you can choose to run portable version.
If you are on linux you will have to have speech-dispatcher installed, configure it to use the voice of your choice. It has to be running prior to running XBMC. So for now it is probably a good idea to run XBMC from within the desktop (if you are using orca with gnome or xfce it means you have working enviromment). Speech-dispatcher is packaged for most of the distros including debian, ubuntu, open suse, fedora and arch linux. I don't know the details about the others.
If you are using no screen reader and / or you have no sound from your speech synthesizer then you should get to install and configure one before proceeding further.
1) You will have to have XBMC installed if you are on either of these platforms windows or linux. On windows just download the installer on linux it is verry likelly your distro has XBMC packaged so install it using your prefered package manager. I am on arch linux so I know you can do sudo pacman -S xbmc in the terminal.
2) Launch XBMC eventhough you will have no access to its UI if you are blind. Then try to execute the following steps in the order as I am describing. If you find something different or unexpected please describe it so we can try figure out what might be different and suggest how to make it work for you.
- Press some arrow keys e.g. left, right, up or down. As you are pressing these you should hear clicking sound as you navigate over the controls on the XBMC home screen.
- Try to change to other window e.g. by pressing alt+tab and make sure you can access it using your screen reader. If you are on linux and you do only have single display configured you may have issues switching to other windows while XBMC is in full screen. You can cycle full screen and windowed modes by pressing \ [back slash] key. So if you are unable to switch to other window using alt+tab press the back slash key on your keyboard and retry pressing alt+tab again.
- Now try to change back to the XBMC window and verify you can still navigate XBMC home screen. Again you are looking for the click sound caused as you navigate over the controls.
- Finally try to exit XBMC by pressing ctrl+end on your keyboard.
3) Now you have to install my er... add-ons. If you can see good enough or you have a friend you can ask for help just launch your install of XBMC and navigate to Settings -> Add-ons and in there choose the entry saying something like Instal an add-on from a zip file. Then browse for a zip file downloaded from this post.
You have to install two add-ons. If you are on linux install both these in this order. script.module.speechdispatcher.zip and then script.voicemenus.zip. If you are on windows install the add-ons in this order script.module.nvda.zip and then script.voicemenus.zip.
If you were able to complete this step number 3 then do not execute the next step just read it so you are able to find out xbmc directory and continue with the step 5.
4) Here I assume you are unable to install XBMC Add-ons using the XBMC UI, so I will describe how you can extract them into a proper directory manually so XBMC will be able to load them.
Now you do need to find the XBMC addon directory. On windows press windows+r to display the run dialog and enter "%appdata%\xbmc" without the quotes. On linux navigate to the folder ~/.xbmc .
In the xbmc folder you will see some files and additional subfolders. Enter the addons folder. This is the folder you should extract the addon zip files into.
If you are on linux extract both files script.module.speechdispatcher.zip and script.voicemenus.zip into the addons folder.
If you are on windows extract both files script.module.nvda.zip and script.voicemenus.zip into the addons folder.
5) Now go to the xbmc folder as described at the beginning of the previous step. Inside the xbmc folder find the subfolder named userdata. In the userdata folder either find the keymaps subfolder or if the keymaps folder does not exist at this location then please create it.
Into the keymaps folder copy the file keyboard.xml. If you already have your user specific keyboard.xml in this location then you have to manually merge the two files. If you have ever edited keyboard.xml your-self you might be able to do this without further explanation.
6) Make sure your screen reader / speech-dispatcher is still working as it should and start / restart XBMC. When XBMC starts you should get voiced entries as you navigate over the controls in the home screen inside the various libraries, menus and settings.
There are still many controls where the voice menus don't work. These include dialog windows where you can only navigate over the buttons, media info entries where you can only hear names of media properties, settings where you can only hear control names and not their states and types.
Please ask for more details if you are unsure while performing some of these steps or if something does not work the way you expect it to.
Still if someone can give us more power to make this better I would be glad to receive hints, suggestions etc.
Downloads
script.module.speechdispatcher.zip
script.module.nvda.zip
script.voicemenus.zip
keyboard.xml
