Auditory First

AAC for Auditory and Physically impaired first. Other solutions exist for other purposes. pasco is not a tool to meet all needs

Flexible and powerful configuration

Need a cue in one language and main voice in another? Need recorded sounds and voices for the cue and different ones for the main? Need next letter word prediction? pasco has you covered for features not available elsewhere

Here to help

pasco is being developed in the open. Want changes? Ask for them? Worried about obsolence? Pasco is here for good. Need some help right now that our documentation cant answer? Need a new feature? Please get in touch

COMPATIBILITY NOTE pasco is working best on iOS right now. Other platforms to follow.

Our small team truly appreciates every contribution made by our community: user stories, feature requests, bug reports, and especially pull requests!. If you have any questions please reach out to our Core team at AceCentre.

User stories

So you use pasco? Like what we are doing? Got a real problem that needs fixing but don't understand all this code stuff? Please get in touch. We will try and help - but please note; this is very much a open source, and fundraised project. If you can please consider donating the project

pasco Repository

acecentre/pasco

This is the home to the project. Please fork and make changes on this project going forward.

Simple Pull Requests

Before we get into the full-blown "proper" way to do a pull request, let's quickly cover an easier method you can use for small fixes. This way is especailly useful for fixing quick typos in the docs, but is not as safe for code changes since it bypasses validation and linting.

1. Sign in to GitHub

2. Go to the file you want to edit (eg: this page)

3. Click the pencil icon to "Edit this file"

4. Make any changes

5. Describe and submit your changes within "Propose file change"

That's it! GitHub will create a fork of the project for you and submit the change to a new branch in that fork. Just remember to submit separate pull requests when solving different problems.

Proper Pull Requests

Loosely based on this great Gist by Chaser324

We like to keep a tight flow when working with GitHub to make sure we have a clear history and accountability of what changes were made and when. Working with Git, and especially the GitHub specific features like forking and creating pull requests, can be quite daunting for new users.

To help you out in your Git(Hub) adventures, we've put together the (fairly standard) flow of contributing to an open source repo.

Forking the repo

Whether you're working on the API or the App, you will need to have your own copy of the codebase to work on. Head to the repo of the project you want to help out with and hit the Fork button. This will create a full copy of the whole project for you on your own account.

To work on this copy, you can install the project locally according to the normal installation instructions, substituting the name acecentre with the name of your github account.

Keeping your fork up to date

If you're doing more work than just a tiny fix, it's a good idea to keep your fork up to date with the "live" or upstream repo. This is the main acecentre repo that contains the latest code. If you don't keep your fork up to date with the upstream one, you'll run into conflicts pretty fast. These conflicts will arise when you made a change in a file that changed in the upstream repo in the meantime.

On git remotes

When using git on the command line, you often pull and push to origin. You might have seen this term in certain commands, like

git push origin master

or

git pull origin new-feature

In this case, the word origin is refered to as a remote. It's basically nothing more than a name for the full git url you cloned the project from:

git push origin master

is equal to

git push git@github.com:username/repo.git master

A local git repo can have multiple remotes. While it's not very common to push your code to multiple repo's, it's very useful when working on open source projects. It allows you to add the upstream repo as another remote, making it possible to fetch the latest changes straight into your local project.

# Add 'upstream' to remotes
git remote add upstream git@github.com:acecentre/pasco.git

When you want to update your fork with the latest changes from the upstream project, you first have to fetch all the (new) branches and commits by running

git fetch upstream

When all the changes are fetched, you can checkout the branch you want to update and merge in the changes.

git checkout master
git rebase upstream/master

If you haven't made any commits on the branch you're updating, git will update your branch without complaints. If you have created commits in the meantime, git will step by step apply all the commits from upstream and try to add in the commit you made in the meantime. It is very plausible that conflicts arise at this stage. When you've changed something that also changed on the upstream, git requires you to resolve the conflict yourself before being able to move on.

Conflicts You should always favor changes on upstream over your local ones.

Doing Work

Whenever you begin working on a bugfix or new feature, make sure to create a new branch. This makes sure that your changes are organized and separated from the master branch, so you can submit and manage your pull requests for separate fixes/features more easily.

# Checkout the master branch - you want your new branch to come from master
git checkout master

# Create a new branch named newfeature (give your branch its own simple informative name)
git branch newfeature

# Switch to your new branch
git checkout newfeature

Up-to-date Make sure to update your master branch with the one from upstream, so you're certain you start with the latest version of the project!

Submitting a Pull Request

Prior to opening your pull request, you might want to update your branch a final time, so it can immediately be merged into the master branch of upstream.

# Fetch upstream master and merge with your repo's master branch
git fetch upstream
git checkout master
git merge upstream/master

# If there were any new commits, rebase your master branch
git checkout newfeature
git rebase master

Make sure to check if your branch is up to date with the master branch of upstream. An outdated branch makes it near impossible for the maintainers of acecentre to check and review the pull request and will most likely result in a delayed merge.

Once you've commited and pushed all the changes on your branch to your fork on GitHub, head over to GitHub, select your branch and hit the pull request button.

You can still push new commits to a pull request that already has been opened. This way, you can fix certain comments reviewers might have left.

Please allow the maintainers of upstream to push commits to your fork by leaving the "Allow edits from maintainers" option turned on. This allows our Core Team to help out in your PR! :::

Feature Requests

80/20 Rule

The main thing to be aware of when submitting a new acecentre feature request, is our rule on edge-cases. To keep the acecentre core codebase as clean and simple as possible we will only consider adding features that at least 80% of our user-base will use. If we feel that less than 80% of our users will find the feature valuable then we will not implement it. Instead, those edge-case features should be added as Extensions.

Browsing Existing Requests

Before adding a new request, you should also first search to see if it has already been submitted. All feature requests should include the enhancement label, so you can filter by that. And remember to also check closed issues since your feature might have already been submitted in the past and either rejected or already implemented.

Also, if you want to see the most highly requested features you can sort by :+1: (the thumbs-up emoji).

Submitting a Request

If your idea passes the 80/20 test and has not already been submitted, then we'd love to hear it! Submit a new issue using the Feature Request template and be sure to include the enhancement label. It's important to completely fill our the template with as much useful information as possible so that we can properly review your request. If you have screenshots, designs, code samples, or any other helpful assets be sure to include those too!

Voting on Requests

You can also vote on existing feature requests. As mentioned above, the :+1: and :-1: are used for sorting, so adding one of these reactions to the GitHub issue will cast a vote that helps us better identify the most desired (or undesired) features. And remember to add a comment if you have additional thoughts to help clarify or improve the request.

Fulfilling a Request

Our core team is always working hard to implement the most highly-requested community features, but we're a small team. If you need the feature faster than we can provide it, or simply want to help improve the acecentre platform, we'd love to receive a pull-request from you!

These Docs will help get you up-and-running quickly, guide you through advanced features, and explain the concepts that make pasco so unique.

What is pasco?

pasco is an open-source unique communication solution aimed at individuals who have a physical and visual impairment.

A quick overview

What makes it unique?

Note we definitely aren't trying to make something that already exists. There are many solutions those less visually impaired or with greater physical access can use - and should use! However if you want a purely auditory scanning interface you may want some features that these options struggle to provide as they try and meet the needs of a greater selection of indviduals. So what can we provide in pasco for auditory scanning?

• Lets imagine you want a auditory cue in one language - but output your main "voice" in another. Thats difficult to do right now in many commercial solutions

• If you want rapid 'pre' auditory scan - a auditory cue that is like quickly visually scanning the interface in front of you

• You want a recorded audio file (e.g. someones actual voice) for the main spoken output - and a different recorded audio file for the cue.

• Because the language file doesnt have pictures why can't you just write out somones list of phrases and messages in a text file?

• you want a way of scanning in-app in a special way - but be able to use the entire device too - not just in a really slow in-efficient way that is great for all other apps - but not communication.

• as well as simple text files wouldnt it be great to import and export to different communication apps? After all, your language is yours not a software companies.

Access

On-Screen Navigation

Enable or disable the 4-way navigation tool. Remember - you can reposition this just by dragging it - and resize it by pressing and holding on the tool - then dragging one of the corners. Have a watch of to see how it works.

Access Mode

There are currently three options;

1. 1 switch - Auto-Scan

2. 2+ switches

3. Wheel (NB: Experimental!)

Switch Setup - Background

Switch access works by mapping keyboard keys to different actions. A box which allows one or several switches to be plugged in and then connect to the device is then needed. Be aware that for pasco we are looking at switch boxes that support keyboard presses without any additional software. Some (such as the JoyCable and the Crick USB switch box) emulate a joystick button which won't work. Also switch boxes such as the Hook+ won't work either . The following currently work with pasco on iOS:

• .

2+ Switches (Default)

By default switch access is set to Manual - which would allow someone to use the on-screen navigation tool - or use 4 switches to navigate the currently active language tree. For example the arrow keys - up, down, left & right - would allow someone to access the tree. Equally, the keys a (left), s (down), d (right), w (up) can be used. Lastly the keys 1 and 2 would allow a user to go left and right in the tree.

1 switch - Auto-Scan

Automatic scanning, often called "1 switch scanning" allows a user with one switch to navigate pasco. The computer moves through each item so the user doesn't have to - and only selects the one they want when ready.

Be aware - you need to select which switch key selects (moves forward) - which you can do in the option "Switch key to select items". There are then some options you can configure:

Loops (Default: 3)

The number of times the automatic scan runs through each level of the tree before stopping.

Delay at first item (ms) (Default: 1000 ms)

It is sometimes useful to have a delay at the first item in each level of the branch to help someone to time their switch press.

Auto-scanning delay (ms) (Default: 3000 ms)

The time the scanner moves from one item to a next automatically. Want it to scan quicker/faster? Move it down. Want it to scan slower? Move it up.

Configure Actions

Switch key to select items

Here you can choose your switches (keys) and what should do what action. Select the action (e.g. in Automatic/1-switch scanning you will need to just select the "Select item" action). Then add your key. Remove any keypresses that you don't want to be used by pressing the red cross.

Minimum Cue Time (ms) (Default: 0 ms)

By turning this on it stops the user selecting a large number of items in the tree before hearing the cue. You can change the default time here.

You probably want to keep it under 500ms other wise it can feel laggy

Ignore second hits (ms) (Default: 100 ms)

This feature stops the switches being responded to if they are hit within this timeframe. So for example, if a user presses a switch and hits immediately afterwards - pasco will ignore this second press if it is within the timeframe. Some

Helpers

We will add additional 'helpers' (actions that alter the tree) here - but for now we only have one helper:

Back option for all branches

It's really useful for single switch scanners to get back a branch if they need to. This adds the option of 'Back' to the end of each Branch, at the beginning of each branch or not at all.

Speech

Cue Voice

The cue voice - often called the private voice is the synthesised voice that is designed for the communication user to hear. Ideally this would be to a headphone or quiet speaker that only the communication aid user can hear.

Choose your voice and the related volume, pitch and rate (speed) of the voice as you wish. Note there is a plus symbol - this allows people who are using more than one language to add a different synthesised voice for that language. Note there is a line on each slider. This defines the default position so you can reset it if you ever slide this by accident.

Main Voice

The main voice - often called the public voice is the synthesised voice that is designed for the communication partner(s) to hear. This is often an amplified speaker.

Choose your voice and the related volume, pitch and rate (speed) of the voice as you wish. Note there is a plus symbol - this allows people who are using more than one language to add a different synthesised voice for that language.

First time run (Cue Voice)

For many people who are visually impaired its useful to 'hear' the items at each selected branch. This is like someone who is using their eyes to visually scan the interface. It give the user a fast way of scanning the items. If you turn this on we recommend making as fast as you can before the voice becomes hard to understand.

This won't increase the speed of any recorded messages. Note: This option is only available for automatic scanning.

Appearance

This area defines how the application looks and feels.

Font size

Adjust the font size of the text shown in pasco

Theme

There are a number of themes - some designed for people with a visual impairment - to aid easier reading of the text

Locale

To change the language of the app (the menus and the configuration text) you can change it here.

This doesn't automatically change the language of the trees/vocabulary. For that you will have to use something like google translate.

Vocabulary

Active Tree

Tools

Load an example tree

Pasco has some example vocabularies installed which you can load up. Select the tree, Press "load selected"", then "Save Tree".

Export / Import

Here you can export or import your vocabulary file as a zip file - or a OBF file - to be used in different AAC programmes.

Edit Tree

Below are solutions to some common issues that you may experience when working with pasco.

Sound issues

I have a bluetooth speaker connected but its coming out the device (or vice versa)

Its fair to say we haven't nailed bluetooth speakers yet. Its tough

Editing issues

How do I get the keyboard to edit text?

Press and hold the small arrow in the bottom right of the keyboard.

But I can't enter a tab! How do I do it?

Yes. Annoyingly there is no tab key on iPads/iPhones etc. So what to do? Follow these steps to make a keyboard replacement