Code cleanup: officially remove deprecated code paths

[josephsl]

Hi,

This was brought up on NvDA development and add-ons lists:

There are code paths/fragments that are marked as deprecated and to be removed at a future date. I believe this year would be a good time to do it.

The deprecated code paths include:

• synthSettingsRing.i18nName (Synth handler/settings ring: look up normalized names of common voice settings to help with translation contexts #5185)
• config.validate (Remove deprecated validation function. #5932)
• speech.reason constants (imported directly from control types now)
• synthDriverHandler.SynthDriver: speakText and speakCharacter methods.
• config.save
• Others.

Thanks.

[jcsteh]

Happy enough for this to be done, but you'd need to:

1. Check that this stuff isn't accidentally used anywhere in core (and explain how you did it).
2. Test (and document how you tested) that this doesn't have undesirable effects on affected code paths. For example, if you remove config.save, you need to be sure that saving configuration still works.
3. Check commonly used synth drivers (including Pico and Festival) to see if deprecated functions aren't used there. We have no interest in updating these ourselves, but I believe they're still used quite a bit. If they do use deprecated functions, you'd need to be willing to update these.
4. Be willing to deal with any regressions that arise. If a regression occurs and it doesn't get fixed within a few days, we will most likely back out the change and close the PR, since that's the simplest path to resolving the issue.

Thanks.

[josephsl]

Hi, will write a more thorough report (as a comment) soon. Note that I’ll be using grep to look for Core source code fragments that uses deprecated routines. Thanks. From: James Teh [mailto:notifications@github.com] Sent: Sunday, February 5, 2017 3:38 PM To: nvaccess/nvda <nvda@noreply.github.com> Cc: Joseph Lee <joseph.lee22590@gmail.com>; Author <author@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [nvaccess/nvda] Code cleanup: officially remove deprecated code paths (#6846) Happy enough for this to be done, but you'd need to: 1. Check that this stuff isn't accidentally used anywhere in core (and explain how you did it). 2. Test (and document how you tested) that this doesn't have undesirable effects on affected code paths. For example, if you remove config.save, you need to be sure that saving configuration still works. 3. Check commonly used synth drivers (including Pico and Festival) to see if deprecated functions aren't used there. We have no interest in updating these ourselves, but I believe they're still used quite a bit. If they do use deprecated functions, you'd need to be willing to update these. 4. Be willing to deal with any regressions that arise. If a regression occurs and it doesn't get fixed within a few days, we will most likely back out the change and close the PR, since that's the simplest path to resolving the issue. Thanks. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#6846 (comment)> , or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AHgLkCPtMdk6paOne-YaVxJ1yxrvrVHLks5rZl1SgaJpZM4L3oYe> .

[josephsl]

Hi,

The following describes the current situation with various deprecated code paths. For each one, the following procedure was used:

1. Switch to the NVDA Core source directory.
2. Run grep with the following parameters: grep -lr expression
3. For ease of reading, the output was piped to a text file for examination later.
4. For each code path found, the context was looked at (function level, surrounding lines, etc.). For some, git log was used to see the history of the file in question and where the line came from.
5. Ran NVDA from source code prior to and after removing the deprecated code paths to make sure regressions didn't occur (so far, none).

Status of removed code paths:

config.save:

• Not used by anything in the NVDA Core source.
• Already calls config.conf.save, and likewise other modules call config.conf.save instead of config.save.
• Add-ons that weren't updated to deal with config.conf may need to be updated.
• Core regression: none.

config.validateConfig:

• config.ConfigManager does not call this function anymore, nor does other modules.
• config.val was also removed, as config.conf.validator will now fetch validator directly from Validator constructor.
• Add-ons that uses config.validateConfig will need to be updated to provide their own implementations.
• Regressions: none.

SynthSetting.i18nName:

• Not used by NVDA Core modules.
• displayNameWithaccelerator replaces this attribute.
• Speech synthesizer drivers that uses i18n must provide displayNameWithAccelerator.
• Regressions: none.

speech.reason constants:

• No module in NVDA Core uses this.
• At least one add-on still relies on this, and fixing it is trivial.
• Replaced by reason constants from control types.
• Regressions: none.

SynthDriver.speakText/speakCharacter:

• Should be handled by SynthDriver.speak.
• NVDA Core falls back to speakText and speakCharacter.
• speakText raises not implemented error, while speakCharacter is still implemented.
• Audiologic driver still implements speakText.
• Regressions: potentially major.

In case of the last one, I'd like to hear what Audiologic developers would have to say before proceeding, and for speech.reason constants, add-on authors will be notified.

Thanks.

[jcsteh]

Thanks for the thorough details Joseph. I think the Svox Pico and Festival add-ons should also be checked. As I noted, we aren't likely to find the time to update these ourselves any time soon, so if these depend on deprecated functions, that will be a problem.

[josephsl]

Hi,

Results:

• Svox Pico: ready to move on (no need to modify).
• Festival: speakText still implemented.
• Newfon: speakText still implemented.

For Newfon and Festival: if SynthDriver.speak and SynthDriver.speakText are identical in terms of what they do, then it'd be best to alert the authors so they can change it.

Thanks.

[jcsteh]

I don't think either are being maintained any more. However, we released them one-off because people were depending on them. speak and speakText are different. speak takes a speech sequence which might include both commands and speech. speakText takes text and an index. Conversion may or may not be simple depending on the synth. At the end of the day, unless someone is willing to do the work to update and test these, we cannot remove these deprecated methods, simply because users still depend on them.

[Adriani90]

What needs to be done here further on? All PRs are either closed or merged.
cc: @josephsl, @feerrenrut

[josephsl]

Hi, there are other things we may need to remove or mark as deprecated, more so once we transition to python 3. Thanks. From: Adriani90 <notifications@github.com> Sent: Monday, April 1, 2019 11:19 AM To: nvaccess/nvda <nvda@noreply.github.com> Cc: Joseph Lee <joseph.lee22590@gmail.com>; Mention <mention@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [nvaccess/nvda] Code cleanup: officially remove deprecated code paths (#6846) What needs to be done here further on? All PRs are either closed or merged. cc: @josephsl <https://github.com/josephsl> , @feerrenrut <https://github.com/feerrenrut> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#6846 (comment)> , or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AHgLkHWuJ67mL8oFvsL-cAoPQ-alEkUqks5vck2BgaJpZM4L3oYe> .

[Brian1Gaff]

Do you envisage a lot of app modules giving problems as well as add ons? I think the development cycle for such a big change is probably going to be longer than the norm to avoid things looking worse than the current version. Brian bglists@blueyonder.co.uk Sent via blueyonder. Please address personal E-mail to:- briang1@blueyonder.co.uk, putting 'Brian Gaff' in the display name field. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Lee" <notifications@github.com> To: "nvaccess/nvda" <nvda@noreply.github.com> Cc: "Subscribed" <subscribed@noreply.github.com> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2019 7:23 PM Subject: Re: [nvaccess/nvda] Code cleanup: officially remove deprecated code paths (#6846) Hi, there are other things we may need to remove or mark as deprecated, more so once we transition to python 3. Thanks. From: Adriani90 <notifications@github.com> Sent: Monday, April 1, 2019 11:19 AM To: nvaccess/nvda <nvda@noreply.github.com> Cc: Joseph Lee <joseph.lee22590@gmail.com>; Mention <mention@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [nvaccess/nvda] Code cleanup: officially remove deprecated code paths (#6846) What needs to be done here further on? All PRs are either closed or merged. cc: @josephsl <https://github.com/josephsl> , @feerrenrut <https://github.com/feerrenrut> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#6846 (comment)> , or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AHgLkHWuJ67mL8oFvsL-cAoPQ-alEkUqks5vck2BgaJpZM4L3oYe> .

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[LeonarddeR]

There are some instances from this issue which I did not pick up as part of my pull request that removed deprecated functionality. @josephsl: As your are the author of this issue, could you look into this?

[josephsl]

Hi,

At the moment the noted ones are part of Project Threshold (2 and 3).

The other things to do would be removing unused module imports (to be done today), updating docstrings to change references of "basestring" to "str" (part of dev docs branch), looking for more deprecated code paths (as they show up through broader testing), and minor changes here and there.

For now, I'll close this so PR's can take over. I think new ones that would naturally arise due to Python 3 transition should be documented as new issues.

Thanks.