Technical information:
The following technical overview is provided for interest only and is not required for using SpeakOn.
SpeakOn is written in Java and is multi-platform.
The SpeakOn framework is built on top of Oscar and OSGi (Open Source Gateway initiative) framework implementation.
OSGi (www.osgi.org) is a framework which facilitates a modular approach to system functionalities. Each unit of software is called a bundle and the framework provides facilities for managing these bundles locally and remotely. A bundle can import and export packages and services and these are managed automatically by the framework.
SpeakOn is using the facilities of OSGi transparently ie. the user interacts with SpeakOn and not with OSGi during normal operation.
Each application in SpeakOn is packaged in one or more OSGi bundles. There are other bundles which form part of SpeakOn which are not applications and these provide various management and housekeeping services.
SpeakOn architecture is based on three main elements: applications, tasks and controls organized in three lists as follows.
a. List of active applications in SpeakOn. SpeakOn contains at least one active application; the Manager application which cannot be closed;
b. List of tasks in an application. Each application contains at least one task;
c. List of controls in a task. A task must contain at least one control.
Every task contains a menu which is context sensitive.