I am not an expert on regular expressions, but I sure
love to use them because they solve many decision problems
regarding text and how it is processed. For every problem
solved using a RE, hoever, there is a potential side effect created that
is just waiting to kick you in the knee. Output text is best
described as a stream of consciousness. We humans have the most
sophisticated computing system on Earth sitting right atop our
necks and our speech output is usually controlled by the context
of what we are doing and talking about at the moment. It's also
influenced by our age, education and where we came from.

A speech program for a computer doesn't even come close
to having any concept of that type of context and it gets to be a knotty
problem even for humans placed in an unfamiliar situation in
which street slang and vernacular are different on different
blocks of the same street.

We instantly know whether we should say the long E sound
when seeing R E A D or whether we should say a word that sounds
just like the color red if we just read a book.

A speech synthesizer that can get that little issue right
every time doesn't exist and that extraordinary computer that
sits on most of our spines can even be confused by unusual syntax
so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for someone to come up with
a software solution anytime soon, at least, not today.

I will say to those working on these projects, Keep up
the good work.

Probably the best idea in the mean time could be some
form of easily accessible switch that can be changed on the fly
to enable and disable the triggers that are causing misbehavior.
In the world of software, one situation's annoying behavior is
another's pure genius.

Martin McCormick

"Quentin Christensen" <quentin@nvaccess.org> writes: