What are libTolk and ZDSRAPI for?

[Srandista]

I downloaded latest Win x64 builds from action tab, and found out, that there are two new dll libraries, that are required, and couldn't find enough info about. libTolk is at least mention couple time in the source code, but couldn't find some concrete info, what is it for, and ZDSRAPI is not mentioned anywhere, yet without it, the game won't start (it shows intro videos, but it'll crash before showing game menu).

Can I ask, why are these files included and why they are required for running DevilutionX?

[StephenCWills]

Tolk is an abstraction library for screen readers. ZDSR is a screen reader. Tolk includes a dependency on ZDSRAPI.
https://github.com/sig-a11y/tolk/blob/main/libs/x64/ZDSRAPI_x64.dll

The reason why we depend on these is documented here: #6109

[Srandista]

Thank you, this makes sense. Is it however needed to include these files as a hard requirement also for people, who doesn't need that functionality?

[AJenbo]

Yes, else we can't check if you're blind and need a screen reader.

[StephenCWills]

AJenbo is not wrong, but it's also not a hard requirement at build time.

DevilutionX/CMakeLists.txt

Line 164 in e2e8446

option(SCREEN_READER_INTEGRATION "Build with screen reader support" OFF)

The next release will include these assemblies. They don't hurt anything. If you really want a build without them, you will need to create that yourself.

[Srandista]

Thank you, this was very insightful!

[AJenbo]

How would we test if they have ZDSR enabled if we don't have libTolk? I suppose we could just assume that the user doesn't want screen reader support if they delete them, but we would still need to include them in case they are needed.

[Srandista]

Yeah, I don't have a issue with those files be distributed with DevilutionX, I was just surprised, that they are absolutely necessary for it to run at all, even tho this wasn't the case before (and even tho I'm all for accessibility, majority of the gamers don't need that functionality). After all, libsodium is also statically linked by default and can be deleted, if not needed.

[AJenbo]

static linking means it's embedded (which is what we usually do) but then you can't delete it, maybe you mean hardlinking which is the case for libtolk. You can delete it just like libsodium, as long as you don't hit any features that use it, for libsodium that is starting a private multiplayer session, for libtolk it would be displaying the mainmenu text which is a bit harder to avoid, but you can view the intro.

Update: Maybe libsodium is only statically linked on Linux