[Development] Dictation Issues with Qt-built software

[Frederik Gladhorn]

On torsdag 3. november 2016 13.50.51 CET Morten Sorvig wrote:
> > On 1 Nov 2016, at 09:41, Robert Iakobashvili <coroberti at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Dear Qt-Management and Developers,
> > 
> > People cannot dictate to Qt-software at Mac as filed:
> > 
> > https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-56811
> 
> 
> Hi, 
> 
> I see two possible ways to solve this:
> 
> 1) Add cross-platform speech-to-text capabilities to Qt’s text input
> classes.
 This would be implemented using native API such as
> NSSpeechRecognizer, or an open source speech recognition library bundled
> with Qt. The behavior we get from this option may not be exactly native.
> 
> 2) Use NSTextField in Qt applications. This gives us the exact native
> behavior,
 for speech recognition and everything else, including future
> NSTextEdit features. However, NSTextEdit would integrate on the QWindow
> level, and not for example as a Qt Quick scene graph item.
> 
> Neither of these are straightforward, which is one reason why the bug
> remains
 open.

I think this is a mis-understanding. From my understanding both Windows and 
macOS offer dictation out of the box. The task for us should be to make sure 
that these work with Qt's text inputs.
I haven't looked into this, but there are two options these tools could be 
taking: input methods or accessibility in some form.

I suspect that it's using accessibility, but of course research is needed 
first, this is completely guesswork for now.
Assuming it's a11y, we need to find out what we're lacking, then we can fix the 
problem. 
For Windows, if it is accessibility, we should check if it can work with 
applications using IAccessible2, or if there's something required from 
UIAutomation.
For mac, I suspect we simply don't implement some property in the 
accessibility protocol.

Cheers,
Frederik



> 
> 
> > 
> > The very reason to bother you and write this email
> > is because a similar previous dictation related issue at Windows filed in
> > 2014
 is still pending without being resolved:
> > 
> > https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-43046
> 
> 
> This is an iOS (not Windows) bug. Also worth looking at though :)
> 
> In general a good way to improve and maintain the accessibility
> implementation
 in Qt would be to give it a second user. UI testing and
> automation comes to mind as a good candidate.
> 
> Morten
> 
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