2014-05-05 18:37:36 (edited by Victorious 2014-05-05 18:59:10)

Hi All

I've always thought that the latest versions of jaws were no longer vulnerable to eloquenc  crash strings, but I was unfortunately proven wrong. Does anyone know how to prevent jaws from crashing when encountering a string? Tried changing pronunciations in dictionary manager, but it didn't help. Dictionary manager doesn't support regex anyways, so its far from the ideal solution.

Edit: wonder if its possible through the use of jaws scripting? Window-eyes users have a script called eloquence fix they can use at http://www.gwmicro.com/App_Central/Apps … ptid=1026.

2014-05-06 18:05:47

Just one more reason why I hate the Shark.

But wait, what's that? A transport! Saved am I! Hark, over here! Hey nonny non, please help!

2014-05-07 03:48:41

The same happens with NVDA when running eloquence, so it's obviously a problem with the synthesizer itself.
  If a script was programmed for window-eyes to prevent this from occurring, I reccon the same could be done with NVDA and JAWS. But the real question is, how many people are actually using Jaws in this community? By the looks of what people say about it not many people here like it much. But if there so happens to be some one who programs Jaws scripts, you might want to hit them up. Peter Torpy, one of the hosts of eyes on success (http://eyesonsuccess.net) has programmed Jaws scripts from what I can gather.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2014-05-07 11:25:22

I eagerly anticipate the day that I can completely switch from jaws to NVDA fulltime.

2014-05-12 21:53:00

Here's an article why. This one uses the word "Web hes day" as an example.

http://castellanito1986.blogspot.com/20 … uence.html

2014-05-13 04:08:24

Victorious, in this case the best way to avoid that problem is simply not to use Eloquence. There are plenty of decent alternatives so that should not be a problem.

Sincerely,
Thomas Ward
USA Games Interactive
http://www.usagamesinteractive.com

2014-05-13 06:30:58

I don't know of anything that sounds as good as eloquence that is understandable at very high speeds.

2014-05-13 08:12:01

Victorious, well, one suggestion is Espeak. I've switched to Espeak because it is very understandable at a very high rate of speed and is very responsive. Once you get use to the voice I think it makes a decent replacement for Eloquence.

Sincerely,
Thomas Ward
USA Games Interactive
http://www.usagamesinteractive.com

2014-05-13 10:34:39

I personally am not an eloquence fan anyway, mostly because it can't do a half decent  British English  accent.  orphius human sounding voices I've always found a  great compromise between speed and  understandability AND THERE ARE NO ORPHIUS CRASH STRINGS AS FAR AS i KNOW, though these days with the improvements to vocalizer,  (and a few orphius  CONFLICTS in later version of supernova), I've largely switched to using realspeak daniel full time, (AND i'VE YET TO FIND A VOCALIZER CRASH STRING EITHER).


It actually seems that the general voicing technology has very much improved. I remember when  the realspeak voices had such a major lag in response time they were nearly  unusable, at least at the speed I  prefer them, thankfully that has very much changed, at least as far as supernova (and indeed all Ios devices), are concerned..

Listening to the new voice for Siri on Ios, I do wonder if we'll get to a point where the rythms and word pause issue that have always  been a stark line between human and synth voices (even the better synths), will no longer be an issue.

I do look forward to that time, sinse that will  be the point where there will be no distinguishable difference between a bad human narrator (ie one who does not do character voices etc), and a synth.

It's not happened yet, well not satisfactorally enough for me at least, but I don't think we're that  far off.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-05-22 21:48:57

Hello guys.
Look, now that you just talk about eloquence crash strings, I've just discovered a nice bug in Eloquence, with JAWS15. It also happens with NVDA for those who are using NVDA with that synth drive. I'm gonna show it to you, and don't be afraid to read cuzz the only thing that's gonna happen is, that simply eloquence cannot say this string propperly. its  almost the same soy soy thing with microsoft Sam, though some times if you do this repeatedly, JAWS simply does not say anything, but you don't lose your speech. so here we go.
Look what happens when you type something like this: e juarasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuas
Dang it, in my case its not wanting to read it, for a very unknown reason. so here we go: puro juarasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuas. e juarasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuas. So when I do a say all, it simply doesn't reads it. but, lets make a third attempt:
cur juarasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuasjuas.
Well, I hope you guys can notice the thing. yesterday, when I did this Eloquence was making a sound like falling off a pit. what a bug! isn't it?

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. he gives to the human being complete joy and happyness. Why don't you receive him today?

2014-05-23 02:36:17

@andy93: I'm not usually a  fan of this kind of thing, but reading your message in say all with NVDA and the eloquence addon may be the best thing ever.  It really does scream and die.  ROFL

2014-05-23 13:51:02

Hi,
@andy93: Wow, what a hilarious start to the day! My stomach is aching but you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way because I'm laughing so much! Thanks for this very funny bug.

2014-06-03 23:44:08

The newest version of NVDA is imune to the crash with Eloquence, but worse yet, NVDA 2014 does not support Eloquence, or at least, not that i know of, because it always says that the synthesiser cannot be loaded.

Ulysses, KJ7ERC
She/they
Reedsy

2017-09-04 04:05:22

So, found this on a google search, and thought I'd resurrect it! Ha ha ha! I'm quite good at that. Anyway, that, is, hilarious! Eloquence definitely has some strange oddities.

The Beast continued its studies with renewed Focus, building great Reference works and contemplating new Realities. The Beast brought forth its followers and acolytes to create a renewed smaller form of itself and, through Mischievous means, sent it out across the world.
from The Book of Mozilla, 6:27

2017-09-04 09:32:14

And yet, even though the Vocaliser Expressive voices have progressed satisfactorily, Eloquence is still the best, and this is not my opinion only. Many people can't do away with Eloquence despite having many options available. Daniel, in the latest Vocaliser expressive version for example, is a very comprehensive voice, but it lacks some of the intonational features of Eloquence. I recommend you all check out Ivona voices. They are truly promising.

2017-09-04 13:18:38

Can somebody explain why everybody always bashes jaws so much? If its pricing I can understand, but I've been using jaws for years and I honestly prefer it over NVDA for some things, and NVDA is also better for some things, like how it works for some games that jaws doesn't work with. But I don't really understand why everyone always seems to hate jaws on here, it has better elloquence. NVDA eloquance crackles when ever an "O" sound is heard, and the intination is never exact in my opinion, though people use it at different levels so that one doesn't really matter.
As far as espeak goes, I don't think it sounds even close to human, and would not ever consider it to be a good alternitive, that's just me though, I personally think the alex voice on apple products is the best voice, I don't even think it has many crash strings at all, aside from typing "Er" repeatedly with no space like erererer.

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2017-09-04 13:56:33

Here's one reason I will not use JAWS. It does not let you change the inflection of Eloquence unlike OpenBook and NVDA can. I have modified the eSpeak file in the voices and added a few new voices and increased the inflection to make it sound more human-sounding. I use my Eloquence at one hundred percent inflection, and to me that sounds human. Having Eloquence at 50 percent sounds like it was tired or something.
Also, blind people should not have to pay for accessibility. Accessibility is a necessity, not a luxury. You should only pay for luxury items.  The only reason we pay for things like these is because Freedom Scientific's demographics isn't as big as Microsoft's and Apple's. They can both afford to implement accessibility without having to charge a dime. NVDA is free and open-source, which is sort of like how Android is also free and Open-source. I think a blind person should have the right to use a computer right out of the box the same way you get to use your iOS device right out of the box.

Ulysses, KJ7ERC
She/they
Reedsy

2017-09-04 15:02:33

I think a point is wrong here. The fault bears right on Microsoft for not implementing satisfactory accessibility services on its operating system. Freedom scientific is programming a screen reader that is for sail, and it is up to you whether to buy it or not. JAWS has a wide list of features that can offer to its users, plus it is fairly customisable in many areas. I particularly like its integration with the Office package. No Screen reader can come close to JAWS with the support you have on Microsoft word or Excel. NVDA is a viable alternative, but calling it the best screen reader we have today, sounds an unnecessarily harsh statement to me.

2017-09-04 15:18:20 (edited by Orko 2017-09-04 15:22:18)

To get built in OCR capabilities, with NVDA you either have to get some third party OCR package, or use the latest version of Windows 10 so that NVDA can use the built in OCR that Microsoft recently added. On the other hand JAWS has had built in OCR capabilities since before version 15, or at least four years ago.

I've heard people say that NVDA is superior because of all the add ons available for it. Well, it has all those add ons because it needs them to equal the features set that comes ready to use with JAWS.

At the same time JAWS has its own set of issues, so, no its not superior to NVDA either.

They are simply two different screen readers, neither one is better than the other. So I have both installed. JAWS is my primary screen reader and loads when Windows does. NVDA is there for those few, and I do mean few because they don't happen very often, times when NVDA works out better than JAWS. And that is generally when I want to play one of a small set of games. If I didn't play games on my computer, I wouldn't even need to have NVDA installed.

And for crash strings, I never encounter them, they seem to only exists where people are intentionally trying to crash JAWS, or more accurately Eloquence. So I don't worry about them. They never seem to occur in normal day to day use.

2017-09-04 22:40:30

This reminds me of the whole VIPMud/MUSHClient debate. Some people love VIPMud, others hate it and swear by MUSHClient. MUSHClient is free and VIPMud is not. It's the same with JAWS and NVDA.

I really think it comes down to preference. I myself prefer JAWS. For example, the JAWS cursor seems a bit more intuitive to me than NVDA's object navigation. I've also been using JAWS since version 3.5, so I'm very familiar with JAWS.

2017-09-04 22:51:32

Well, I hope the day comes when we have computers with fully usable screen readers installed, and for free. I personally dislike the fac that JAWS uses too many video intercept drivers, which can often crash on you, whereas NVDA doesn't use any video intercept drivers. Object navigation is similar to interacting with VoiceOver.

Ulysses, KJ7ERC
She/they
Reedsy

2017-09-04 23:30:25 (edited by Orko 2017-09-04 23:38:04)

JAWS actually has two methods of object navigation, First there's the JAWS cursor which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. When it doesn't you often find yourself in the clock display in the task bar and can't get out of it no matter what you do.

So I often don't even bother with the JAWS cursor and just use the touch curser, though it has a huge limitation in that the only thing you can do with on screen objects is to select them. You can't make a choice from a drop down list, or adjust a slider, or select a value with a spinner when using the Touch cursor.

I too would like to see the video intercept driver go, but I'm sure that Freedom Scientific has their reasons for keeping it. Not the least of which is that they'd probably have to do a complete rewrite of the screen reader engine to get rid of it, and I don't see them doing that any time soon. Yes, it does occasionally crash, but it's not often. It would be nice if it didn't crash at all but I can live with the one or two times a month when it does.

I've considered switching from JAWS to NVDA but every time I try to find information in the NVDA documentation, and realize how much better the JAWS documentation is, I drop the idea. I'm comfortable with JAWS and the NVDA documentation makes it clear that if I were to switch I'd be looking at pretty much the same learning curve I went through with JAWS, but without the benefit of the excellent training guides and documentation that are available for JAWS. So, No Thank You!

This thread's title needs to be changed to remove the reference to JAWS since the strings will crash any flavor of Eloquence, not just the version that comes with JAWS.

2017-09-04 23:42:38

Then we'll have to petition or force them to remove the driver from JAWS and make it similar to NVDA. and NVDA should put together a training resource exactly like JAWS.

Ulysses, KJ7ERC
She/they
Reedsy

2017-09-04 23:48:18

Petition or not, I don't see either one happening any time soon, so there you go.

2017-09-05 00:01:04

I'm on the exact same page as you orko. Everything stated above you I agree with. I use NVDA for rtr and google chrome to access this forum, and have only ever incountered crash strings on games like dmnb or swamp with online play. Also for any who want a computer with accessibility right out of the box, just get a mac. I use both, and honestly the only thing preventing me from switching entirely to mac is games but also there's no good word processer that will save in doc format, as I use windows at school and would need to be able to do homework on the mac.

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.