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8.14 Voice Lock And Advanced Configuration ¶

Voice Lock is one compatibility input to Aural Presentation, not the entire system. It maps Emacs faces and personality text properties to voices. Faces are visual style labels that Emacsvox can use without requiring sight.

Policy	What it controls	How to inspect or change it
Semantic presentation	Integration roles, events, states, and attributes	Explain, Presentation Options, and feedback rules
Explicit face presentation	Rules deliberately matching an Emacs face	emacsvox-aural-toggle-face-presentation or Aural Doctor
Voice Lock	Historical buffer face/personality mapping	C-e H r l v locally; C-e H r l V globally

To identify Voice Lock’s contribution:

1. Move across differently styled elements, such as a comment/string or Org heading/link.
2. Toggle C-e d v in that buffer and compare the same elements.
3. Explain with C-e E to inspect Voice Lock/face state and contributing rules.

Turning it off removes only that compatibility contribution. Semantic presentation, explicit face rules, cues, tones, and spoken status remain. The global command updates existing and new buffers; a mode can still opt out on startup. The same controls are available at C-e H r l v for the captured buffer and capital V for global policy. That submenu’s w saves only global Voice Lock through Customize. Buffer-local Voice Lock is not captured in Presentation Profiles.

To silence or restore the personality or mapped face at the captured item, choose s in that submenu. This uses the existing local suppression command; it can affect other text using that mapping in the same buffer. It does not retune the named voice, and a globally inaudible mapping cannot be restored there. The change lasts for the buffer and is not saved. Close and reopen the menu from the intended item if its captured source has changed.

For new changes, prefer explanation, settings menus, palettes, and Workbench. Legacy named voices can still use -settings options such as voice-monotone-settings. Customise the option, not a generated acss-... symbol. Historical background is in Audio Formatting And Aural CSS in Emacspeak Heritage.

Named formatting voices such as bolden and annotate follow the active palette. An inherited standard entry may be implemented by a personality’s settings option within the explicit root, not a hidden second fallback. Explicit styles retain their own settings and rules can change the resulting voice.

The Developer Guide covers voice metadata, rule authoring, and integrations; Speech Server Protocols covers delivery. The generated Emacsvox Commands And Options records exact commands, options, and keymaps. These complement the tasks here rather than being prerequisites for them.