Report the language of the text been read by nvdaes · Pull Request #17685 · nvaccess/nvda

nvdaes · 2025-02-08T17:34:08Z

Link to issue number:

Fixes #17664

Summary of the issue:

Users may want to know the language of the text been read, and if the current synthesizer can switch to that language.

Description of user facing changes

In the speech settings panel, a checkbox can be used to determine if the language of the read text should be reported when language detection is enabled.
In the speech settings panel, a combo box is added to choose if NVDA should report if the language is supported by the current synthesizer. Available options are: off, beep or speech.
Added an unassigned command in the caret system category to know the language of the character positioned at the caret.

Description of development approach

In speech/__init__.py, a function is registered (and unregistered) with the filter_speechSequence extension point, to insert the language description (or language code if the description is not available), when a langChangeCommand is found in the sequence to be spoken. The language description won't be inserted if the language command is the last item of the speech sequence, or if lang is None, or if it's the last reported language, or if reportLanguage and reportNotSupportedLanguage options are False. A SpeechSequence member has been added to the SpeechState class to track the last reported language, as well as another function to check and report if the language is supported by the current synthesizer.
LangChangeCommand has methods to determine if the language should be processed by NVDA or the synthesizer.
A new languageHandling.py file has been added to speech to filter speech sequences, adding language descriptions or beep commands to report language as appropriate.
In globalCommands.py, a script has been added to report the language of the character at caret.

Testing strategy:

Tested locally and in the Codepen sample provided in this PR.

Known issues with pull request:

If beep option is chosen to report not supported languages, Occasionally, it's possible to hear beeps when focus changes in web browsers without been notified about the not supported language, though this is not happening after restarting the computer

Code Review Checklist:

Documentation:
- Change log entry
- User Documentation
- Developer / Technical Documentation
- Context sensitive help for GUI changes
Testing:
- Unit tests
- System (end to end) tests
- Manual testing
UX of all users considered:
- Speech
- Braille
- Low Vision
- Different web browsers
- Localization in other languages / culture than English
API is compatible with existing add-ons.
Security precautions taken.

@coderabbitai summary

…s enabled

Co-authored-by: Cyrille Bougot <cyrille.bougot2@laposte.net>

nvdaes · 2025-02-08T22:31:54Z

Seems that, when pressing c to go to the combo box in the old add-ons website, the preferences word is in English but, if it's not spoken, the lastReportedLanguage is set to English, and this causes that the language of the word English in the combo box is not reported. I don't know if this may be fixed with the pre_speech extension point in some way.

CyrilleB79 · 2025-02-09T20:50:53Z

@nvdaes, regarding language translations I guess it would be interesting to list all the specific / corner cases. Then you will be able to determine if they should be handled separately or if they can be ignored.

For example I have the following questions:

zh_CN = Chinese (simplified) and zh_TW = Chinese (Traditional) would be both reported as "Chinese", I guess. Is it OK (cc @cary-rowen)
the language would be reported in the system's language; this would make a difference if you run NVDA in another language than "Windows". Maybe not a big problem, but it's worth informing of this limitation in the PR.
languageHandler.getLanguageDescription('sr'): on my system, it reports (in French): "Serbe (latin)". To be double checked if Serbian tagged webpages are tagged with "sr" or something else and if they are written in Cyrillic or in latin.

nvdaes · 2025-02-10T06:14:33Z

@CyrilleB79 , should the corner cases be addressed in languageHandler.getLanguageDescription?
I'm concerned about the issue regarding pressing c on the add-ons website, since in this case English language may not be reported. So I'm blocked with this.

CyrilleB79 · 2025-02-10T07:01:47Z

@CyrilleB79 , should the corner cases be addressed in languageHandler.getLanguageDescription?

Maybe not; just mentioning in case everyone is aware of it so to decide what to do (accept as is or fix).

nvdaes · 2025-02-10T07:15:35Z

Let's way for comments on this about corner cases, to see how to document it, or if saying that the language description would be reported is enough.
Hope someone can provide ideas to fix the error when jumping to some parts of webpages using quick navigation characters like c to move to combo boxes.

… reporting

nvdaes · 2025-02-18T04:48:17Z

I think that the experience when using this feature with quick navigation or moving the focus with tab is not good, when the language description is reported, then for example the text of a heading and a link, and then the link state like "visited link". In this case "visited link" is pronnounced with a bad entonation, tested with eSpeak-NG. And also, listening the language description for each element, since "visited link" is pronnounced in the default language, is too much.
I think that this should be disabled for quick navigation, unless someone can provide better ideas.

…ends

nvdaes · 2025-02-20T17:26:54Z

Now for me the user experience is acceptable, not perfect, since in say all NVDA can report the language for new paragraphs. See [In-Process 7th February 2025](https://www.nvaccess.org/post/in-process-7th-february-2025/

Copy control+shift+cClose).
If we move the caret to the ending dot of the paragraph with right arrow, and then we make NVDA to say all, this issue seems not to happen.

seanbudd · 2025-03-04T23:14:44Z

Please mark this as a ready for review if it's ready

nvdaes · 2025-03-05T04:02:42Z

Thanks, I plan to continue working on this the next weekend. I stopped working on this since this was not labelled with concept approved, so I thought that this was not prioritized.

seanbudd · 2025-03-05T04:05:05Z

Ah, we are waiting on the implementation to develop

AppVeyorBot · 2025-06-17T08:24:10Z

PASS: Translation comments check.
PASS: License check.
PASS: Unit tests.
FAIL: System tests (tags: installer NVDA). See test results for more information.
Build (for testing PR): https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/g30amp0prav6ft1y/artifacts/output/nvda_snapshot_pr17685-36860,c0598057.exe
CI timing (mins):
INIT 0.0,
INSTALL_START 1.8,
INSTALL_END 1.0,
BUILD_START 0.0,
BUILD_END 23.2,
TESTSETUP_START 0.0,
TESTSETUP_END 0.4,
TEST_START 0.0,
TEST_END 20.2,
FINISH_END 0.1

See test results for failed build of commit c059805765

nvdaes · 2025-06-17T09:28:38Z

Now we use getLanguageDescription from languageHandler and all seem to be right.

…o reportSwitchLang

AppVeyorBot · 2025-06-17T11:50:55Z

PASS: Translation comments check.
PASS: License check.
PASS: Unit tests.
FAIL: System tests (tags: installer NVDA). See test results for more information.
Build (for testing PR): https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/3qlghck6dqoub6h3/artifacts/output/nvda_snapshot_pr17685-36872,3699afdc.exe
CI timing (mins):
INIT 0.0,
INSTALL_START 2.3,
INSTALL_END 1.2,
BUILD_START 0.0,
BUILD_END 29.5,
TESTSETUP_START 0.0,
TESTSETUP_END 0.6,
TEST_START 0.0,
TEST_END 23.2,
FINISH_END 0.2

See test results for failed build of commit 3699afdc8f

AppVeyorBot · 2025-06-17T14:26:46Z

Build (for testing PR): https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/wqk5a8ce0x9dqeni/artifacts/output/nvda_snapshot_pr17685-36874,b8c1f266.exe
PASS: Translation comments check.
PASS: Unit tests.
PASS: License check.
CI timing (mins):
INIT 0.0,
INSTALL_START 2.0,
INSTALL_END 1.1,
BUILD_START 0.0,
BUILD_END 29.7,
TESTSETUP_START 0.0,
TESTSETUP_END 0.6,
TEST_START 0.0,
TEST_END 22.6,
FINISH_END 0.1
FAIL: System tests (tags: installer NVDA). See test results for more information.

See test results for failed build of commit b8c1f2666f

nvdaes · 2025-06-17T15:51:19Z

@seanbudd , I think that these tests take more than 15 minutes, and that these chrome cases, though don't cover all possible configuration, consider relevant situations:

Report when the current'synthesizer doesn't support a language if NVDA is set to do it.
- Don't report dialects.
Report languages with dialects.
Don't report languages at all.

I don't think we should add all the possible combinations of configurations.
Please let me know if I should add some other tests before marking this as ready for review.

seanbudd · 2025-06-24T01:31:54Z

+	)
+
+
+def test_reportNotSupportedLanguageWithoutOtherLanguages():


#17685 (comment)

I think we need just one more test - report language changes on and report not supported set to speech.

If you are concerned around system test time length, I would encourage moving this to a separate test suite i.e. new python/robot file. You might have to factor out some stuff from chrome tests to it's own more generic module.
Or turn chromeTests into a submodule with multiple python test suites corresponding to separate robot files.
This means in GitHub actions we can parallelize it.
I really think we should avoid adding to chromeTests, as we need to modularize it. But I don't want the burden of this work to be on you, i.e. this part is an optional PR review comment.

Co-authored-by: Sean Budd <seanbudd123@gmail.com>

seanbudd

Thanks @nvdaes for all your work

nvdaes · 2025-06-24T05:02:50Z

Thank you @seanbudd . Since you approved this, I think it's better to split tests in a different issue/PR. So for now I won't perform this work.

Qchristensen

Looks good, just two small changes (been -> being)

Co-authored-by: Quentin Christensen <quentin@nvaccess.org>

Qchristensen

Great work!

Spam

AppVeyorBot · 2025-06-24T06:01:19Z

PASS: Translation comments check.
PASS: License check.
PASS: Unit tests.
FAIL: System tests (tags: installer NVDA). See test results for more information.
Build (for testing PR): https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/qoifyu5n9sg00b2o/artifacts/output/nvda_snapshot_pr17685-36943,43f030d6.exe
CI timing (mins):
INIT 0.0,
INSTALL_START 1.5,
INSTALL_END 0.9,
BUILD_START 0.0,
BUILD_END 19.3,
TESTSETUP_START 0.0,
TESTSETUP_END 0.4,
TEST_START 0.0,
TEST_END 20.7,
FINISH_END 0.1

See test results for failed build of commit 43f030d6e9

nvdaes added 2 commits February 8, 2025 12:55

Add ability to report the current language when detecting languages i…

7be8bd2

…s enabled

Added a command to report the language of the character at the caret

f0a9a31

nvdaes changed the title ~~Reportthe language switched to~~ Report the language switched to Feb 8, 2025

CyrilleB79 reviewed Feb 8, 2025

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Comment thread source/globalCommands.py Outdated

CyrilleB79 reviewed Feb 8, 2025

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Comment thread source/globalCommands.py Outdated

CyrilleB79 reviewed Feb 8, 2025

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Comment thread source/speech/speech.py Outdated

CyrilleB79 reviewed Feb 8, 2025

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Comment thread source/speech/speech.py Outdated

nvdaes and others added 2 commits February 8, 2025 23:16

Apply suggestions from code review

6e4b0b3

Co-authored-by: Cyrille Bougot <cyrille.bougot2@laposte.net>

Address review and minor improvements

79e9bb5

nvdaes and others added 4 commits February 11, 2025 21:54

Use _speechState

2393d8a

Merge remote-tracking branch 'nvaccess/master' into reportSwitchLang

df8d7c2

Fix reporting when using quick navigation, avoiding repetition of the…

bb3b7c6

… reporting

Pre-commit auto-fix

e70b380

nvdaes added 6 commits February 18, 2025 18:24

Don't report language description on quick nav

8e437d0

Suppress language description reporting when reading all and a block …

e898b6c

…ends

Don't try to change behavior in read all, seems to be useless

7123970

Merge remote-tracking branch 'nvaccess/master' into reportSwitchLang

2164376

Prevent insertion of None in speech sequence

2eca960

Merge remote-tracking branch 'nvaccess/master' into reportSwitchLang

fb54393

Merge master

4b47171

Change uv.lock

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nvdaes and others added 2 commits June 17, 2025 10:29

Try to fix tests

007413b

Pre-commit auto-fix

20928de

nvdaes added 3 commits June 17, 2025 11:57

Test report language without dialects

79cd544

Merge branch 'reportSwitchLang' of https://github.com/nvdaes/nvda int…

82c9bd2

…o reportSwitchLang

Report not supported language

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Fix test

56c7528

Fix test

2106b39

seanbudd marked this pull request as ready for review June 18, 2025 07:04

seanbudd reviewed Jun 24, 2025

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nvdaes and others added 3 commits June 24, 2025 06:15

Update tests/system/libraries/SystemTestSpy/speechSpyGlobalPlugin.py

f1f9cdc

Co-authored-by: Sean Budd <seanbudd123@gmail.com>

Merge remote-tracking branch 'nvaccess/master' into reportSwitchLang

01349ce

Add test to report languages and not supported language

c40c4fd

seanbudd approved these changes Jun 24, 2025

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Qchristensen requested changes Jun 24, 2025

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Comment thread user_docs/en/changes.md Outdated

Comment thread user_docs/en/changes.md Outdated

seanbudd and others added 2 commits June 24, 2025 15:16

Update user_docs/en/changes.md

7ca9136

Co-authored-by: Quentin Christensen <quentin@nvaccess.org>

Update user_docs/en/changes.md

56d8211

Co-authored-by: Quentin Christensen <quentin@nvaccess.org>

Qchristensen approved these changes Jun 24, 2025

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seanbudd merged commit 60586b8 into nvaccess:master Jun 24, 2025
16 of 17 checks passed

github-actions Bot added this to the 2025.2 milestone Jun 24, 2025

seanbudd mentioned this pull request Jun 24, 2025

Review 2025.2 changelog documentation changes #18293

Merged

lpintes mentioned this pull request May 7, 2026

AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'replace' in normalizeLanguage when using a SAPI4 synthesizer (WinTalker Voice) #20080

Closed

		)


		def test_reportNotSupportedLanguageWithoutOtherLanguages():

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nvdaes commented Feb 8, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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Link to issue number:

Summary of the issue:

Description of user facing changes

Description of development approach

Testing strategy:

Known issues with pull request:

Code Review Checklist:

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