Topic by Dark 2022-05-25 13:44:03 (edited by Dark 2022-05-25 13:46:17)

  • Dark
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Once again, for some completely idiotic technical reason, NVDA is breaking all its addons with the latest update.
Oh, yes I'm sure its more secure and more shiny and has updated language, and has go faster stripes on it, but this is getting extremely tiresome!

You'd think that the developers would be able to write a better piece of software that wouldn't constantly invalidate people's work for no reason with every new update.
Oh and yes, I do think this is the developer's responsibility, but that's a debate for another day.

So apart from  contacting Tiflo for a new version of the vocaliser driver,

I'm wondering if anyone please has any udpated versions of the following:

Extended winamp.
Automatic speech output for interactive fiction interpreters.
Japanese games translator.
translate.
Vlc media player.

I've tried the addon updated and obviously NVDA checks for new versions of addons itself, but that doesn't cover everything, EG I'm guessing a new version of JGT will need to wait on Ian Read.

Either way, if anyone knows where I can find new versions of those addons, that would be good.

Usually I'm fully in support of the NVDA development team, but I confess this business that seems to come up every couple of years really is a bore!

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.)

Dark's Website

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Reply by Slender 2022-05-25 13:58:29

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IF Interpreters will work with a manifest update, and can be found here.

Oh no! Somebody released the h key! Everybody run and hide!

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Reply by Dark 2022-05-25 14:05:10

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Thanks slender, that's handy, I'd really not want to miss that one.

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.)

Dark's Website

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Reply by ambro86 2022-05-25 14:20:18

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Hi @1, I would like to give you a workaround that I used, because I too had several add-ons that were out of date, like jgt, translate, the vocalizer driver, etc.
I state, it is a workaround and some add-ons may not work, however from the tests I have done to me everything works correctly.
You need to check which components will not be updated, and mark them somewhere. Then go to run and type% appdata%.
Now find the nvda folder.
Here go to the addon folder.
Go to the folders of the addons that do not update, and edit the manifest.ini file, changing the line: last tested nvda version, entering 2023.1.
After making the changes, restart your computer, and retry the installation. Now everything will be okay, and those components will be kept!

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Reply by Munawar 2022-05-25 14:39:06

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Yup, I haven't updated for this very reason. The new changes don't seem important enough for me to deal with broken add-ons. Getting really tired of this...and I'm an add-on developer myself. The amount of times we're contacted nowadays to update our add-ons when we have little time for such things is annoying.

Download the Time Zoner NVDA add-on for announcing the time in different timezones
Download Three-D-Velocity and Treasure Hunt from my Github

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Reply by George_Gaylord 2022-05-25 14:45:19

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@Dark, this is a regular thing now, so we're gonna have to get used to it. I skipped this version entirely

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Reply by MatthewSmithYT 2022-05-25 14:55:30

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Ugh. We gotta do something about this.

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Reply by Dark 2022-05-25 15:01:36

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@ambro86, that sounds like a good work around, I'll give it a try if nothing comes up with the other addons I mention.

If indeed the changes to NVDA don't actually break addons at all, its just a matter of date of last testing with the current version, it might be worth having a slightly less draconian method, EG warning people about the supposed incompatibility but letting them continue anyway, especially if many people are indeed not updating for this very reason.

its just this is I believe the third time this has happened, and each time its caused major upset to both users and addon maintainers, and often the benefits of the new version to the average user just aren't immediately worth it.

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.)

Dark's Website

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Reply by ambro86 2022-05-25 15:26:40

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@Dark, I agree, may have add-ons kept warning that they have not been tested with that version of NVDA. I am now testing this latest version, and all add-ons work. However, the average user does not start making changes to all the manifest.ini of addons that are no longer supported.

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Reply by leibylucw 2022-05-25 15:29:58

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It also doesn't help that the centralized, "official" repository doesn't feature many add-ons a lot of folks use, so it becomes a wild Google goose chase which completely defeats the purpose of the add-on updater, but that's already been hashed out many times.

Withholding Speech History and Extended Winamp, I managed to find what I needed via aforementioned wild GOogle goose chase.

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

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Reply by DevilGuardian 2022-05-25 15:50:49 (edited by DevilGuardian 2022-05-25 15:52:32)

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@9 I saw that some of the basic add-ons work even when I updated the latest version, and when I change the manifest file. Thees include unspoken, clock, dual voice, and some others. However, TTS synth drivers, like vocalizer, eloquence, and some old ones don’t seem to comply with the new updated changes.

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Reply by ambro86 2022-05-25 16:12:47 (edited by ambro86 2022-05-25 16:15:13)

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@DevilGuardian, I was able to get Eloquence and Vocalizer to work too. You can find them on the site that helps blind people(smile!). Eloquence can be found as IBMTTS.

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Reply by Chris 2022-05-25 16:21:13 (edited by Chris 2022-05-25 16:23:08)

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Why aren't more add-ons in the official repository anyway? As for modifying the existing add-on files, it's not recommended, so anything that happens as a result is your responsibility to deal with. I don't understand why add-ons keep breaking, unless they're changing things in Python or other components update. It definitely shouldn't happen this frequently, but at the same time, it's the responsibility of the add-on authors to ensure their add-ons are compatible before release. There's a big window of time between releases, so developers should have plenty of time.

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Reply by ambro86 2022-05-25 16:35:13

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For the talk of updating the add-ons, for which the NVDA updater add-on does not find them all, I recommend you to install tienda, a Spanish add-on, which contains practically all the add-ons, and allows you to update them easily, without having to search for them on the site.
Tienda can be downloaded from here https://nvda.es/files/get.php?file=tienda
Personally I uninstalled the NVDA updater add-on, as it has found very few add-ons for some time. Instead, with this I can find new add-ons and update the ones I already have.

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Reply by DevilGuardian 2022-05-25 17:19:05

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@13 I completely agree with you on that one. The Devs who make the NVDA Addons should defenatly update all of them way more frequently to insure compadibility and stibility with the newer NVDA releases. Not to mention I really don’t feel like changing all 200 addons that I downloaded, just for it to work with the latest version of NVDA.

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Reply by leibylucw 2022-05-25 17:28:37

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Well, here's the release notes. Looks like some UIA support for a better MS Office experience and some other stuff that seems esoteric to a few subgroups. Maybe not even worth updating if you can help it.

https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2022-1/

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

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Reply by Ian Reed 2022-05-25 17:49:38

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@Dark, I have updated JGT to work with the latest version of NVDA.
You can download the updated version of JGT here.
I have also updated the link on my site.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

Ian Reed's Website

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Reply by hadi.gsf 2022-05-25 17:54:06

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Munawar wrote:

Yup, I haven't updated for this very reason. The new changes don't seem important enough for me to deal with broken add-ons. Getting really tired of this...and I'm an add-on developer myself. The amount of times we're contacted nowadays to update our add-ons when we have little time for such things is annoying.

totally agreed, i am going to stay on my current version for 6+ months if I have to, I am not letting go of lion OCR

twitter: @hadirezae3
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Reply by Dark 2022-05-25 18:22:45 (edited by Dark 2022-05-25 18:24:44)

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@Ian thanks for that, I figured JGT would get the correct update.

@leibylucw, do you have the updated version of the winamp addon handy?

I'm afraid I disagree that when a so called update breaks half of the things that works with the previous version, it is the responsibility of the addon creators/software developers to do extra work, simply to please the maintainers of the main software/operating system.

this is part of the fudal capitalistic thinking that runs the world now.

in the past, if you looked at cases of say games with level editors or operating systems or whatever, if an update broke compatibility with previously created software for the system, the system's maintainers would do what they could to fix it, or at least, come to an understanding with their client developers, say by making updating as easy a process as possible and promising to not break compatibility, or trying to work in backwards compatibility for things that could not be updated.

Now however, everyone follows the apple/microsoft model whereby those in charge dictate to everyone else, and the choice is our way or the high way.

its just the same way that modern capitalism is no longer about many smaller concerns and companies attempting to fulfil the desires of the customer who exchanges money for their services, but a few mega coorporations literally telling the customer that what they offer is best, which the customer is forced to accept due to the lack of alternatives and the aggressive monopolistic practices of the coorporations.

As I have thought better of the NVDA development team in the past, I really do hope addon maintainers and indeed NVDA users can protest this direction of development and not just say: "well tough! these people are in charge so deal with it!" So that a more amicable solution can be found for everyone.

In the mean time, I'll just try to get as many updates to existing addons as possible, since while we can hope there are changes in the future, this version already seems pretty much doomed.

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.)

Dark's Website

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Reply by leibylucw 2022-05-25 18:33:30 (edited by leibylucw 2022-05-25 19:53:31)

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I can't seem to locate an update for Extended Winamp (or Speech History). I'll keep tabs on Winamp and post if I find anything.

IIRC, there is some friction between project and add-on devs, personal/political dev stuff, etc etc, so we have a limited official repository.

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

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Reply by zakc93 2022-05-25 19:37:47

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Speech history is one of those that works by just updating the manifest. I did actually go through the script (it is relatively short) and they don't appear to be using anything that was mentioned in the changes for developers, so there shouldn't be any issues.

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Reply by DraganRatkovich 2022-05-25 19:59:20

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Hello,

@Dark and others, if you want to change the manifest file for multiple add-ons at once, you can use this NVDA add-on created by a Spanish developer. This add-on helps you select multiple add-ons and change the "lastTestedNVDAVersion" value for the selected add-ons by choosing the desired year.

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Reply by Remi 2022-05-25 20:01:20

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hi
Here is a question that I have been wondering for a while now.
Why can't the installer or something just go into the addons folder and edit all of the manifest files so that the user does not have to go and do it manually

me and a friend of mine have made a youtube channel where we upload beats that we make. If you want to check it out, you can find it at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD0CxF … PFlCqjOtOA

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Reply by DraganRatkovich 2022-05-25 20:12:15

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@23 There are several security considerations behind this, as well as the reason that this method does not always help to run add-ons in modern versions of NVDA, although if you want to do this, I provided an add-on in a previous post for this purpose.

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Reply by the_ruler_of_dark_forces 2022-05-26 11:10:28

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The manifest trick also seems to work on Extended winamp addon.

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