1723319 - reader view mode prevents other applications from using speech-dispatcher

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Reader Mode, defect)

Description

[Forest]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:90.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/90.0

Steps to reproduce:

Tested with Firefox 90.0 on Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS

• Launch firefox on linux
• Open a page in Reader View mode
• Launch another application that uses text-to-speech (e.g. spd-say or mumble)

Actual results:

Other applications' text-to-speech features are silent, and remain silent until several seconds after Firefox exits.

Expected results:

Other applications' text-to-speech features should work normally, at least when Firefox is not speaking.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Web Speech' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Forest]

The problem correlates with the speech-dispatcher process being launched on Firefox's behalf. If other speech apps start (and remain running) before Firefox enters Reader View mode for the first time, all apps (including Firefox) are able to take turns speaking. If Firefox enters Reader View mode before other speech apps start, no other apps can speak, even when Firefox is not speaking and even after the Reader View tab is closed.

Clearing the problem state requires exiting Firefox and all other speech apps for several seconds, until the speech-dispatcher process exits.

Comment 6

[Lonnen :lonnen]

I'm not positive, but I think BugBot missed on this one and it's a Readermode issue

Comment 40

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Restricting comments to cut down on spam in this bug.