Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 124 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#61

Post by warrenm »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #28
warrenm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they do: `cp file1 file2` Vs properly enunciating "Kah-Pee f-i-l-e-1 to f-i-l-e-2"

When I did hands-free coding, I named my variables things that I could say as words. So you'd be saying 'copy file-num-one file-num-two' or something, rather than spelling it out letter by letter. I actually ended up naming things more verbose names because I didn't have to type it all out. So it might be: enunciating: 'copy snake-geary-street-financial-report snake-divisadero-street-financial-report' versus typing:…

tab completion handles goofy and long file names quite handily ... and lot faster than speaking

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

warrenm wrote: post #61
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I did hands-free coding, I named my variables things that I could say as words. So you'd be saying 'copy file-num-one file-num-two' or something, rather than spelling it out letter by letter. I actually ended up naming things more verbose names because I didn't have to type it all out. So it might be: enunciating: 'copy snake-geary-street-financial-report snake-divisadero-street-financial-report' versus typing:…

tab completion handles goofy and long file names quite handily ... and lot faster than speaking

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#63

Post by falcolas »

mertd wrote: post #57
falcolas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy's not wrong. You can speak clearly and comfortably at 250 words per minute. Most folks will type at less than half that. Even shortcuts (which peer comments are relying upon) aren't all that fast - they require additional selection movement with the keyboard or mouse before they can be used.

People do much more than narrating natural language. They navigate menus, highlight text, launch apps, type commands on the terminal etc... I don't see how voice can best keyboard and mouse when considering all interactions.

Strange, I can see it with no problems. Probably because I use VIM quite a bit, which makes use of fairly natural language gestures.

Copy two words

Select line

Paste before word

etc.

Opening apps is ever simpler: "open spotify". Compare the complexity and time required to say those two words against moving your hand to the mouse, moving the mouse to a 100x100 pixel target, and clicking twice within 100ms. Even compare it against using "Cmd-Space Spotify".

It'd require a learning period, but so does - for example - teaching the concept of the mouse to someone who's only ever used a tablet.

EDIT: And I'll copy this from another of my posts - getting good voice control won't take our keyboards and mice away from us.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#64

Post by falcolas »

viro wrote: post #50
falcolas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? "Open hacker news", "go back", "Play liked playlist in Spotify" Seems fairly reasonable. It need not be the only way, but not having to use my mouse to do stupidly simple tasks wouldn't break my heart.

My first guess would be "Open hacker news" requires clear audible speech. While the KB method just requires pressing 'h' and 'enter'. Also, non-cloud speech recognition just recently got decent.

I pressed 'h', and it didn't do anything.

Context matters with such shortcuts. Even if I make sure that I have the location bar selected, focused and clear, 'h enter' takes me to a completely different website - because hacker news is actually 'news.ycombinator.com', so it's not the default by typing'ctrl-k h enter'.

And let's be frank. Even if we do get voice control, it's not going to somehow take our keyboards and mice away from us.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#66

Post by pokeyrule »

jbellis wrote: post #60
maxore44 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a cursorless user myself. Using dictation software for programming is actually relatively fast when you get used to it, but editing code (which is how most of us spend the majority of our time) can be pretty slow. Cursorless was a huge productivity booster for me. It got me to switch from Emacs to VS Code which is saying something.

What distinction are you trying to make between "programming" (fast) and "editing code" (slow) ?

I think the distinction is "programming" refers to just dictating some code from scratch. "editing code" refers to changing code that is already written.

For the former ("programming"), there are many commands that can be used to rapidly output code. For example, a user can say "funky hello world" to get something like

function helloWorld() {

}

But if you're trying to edit code that already exists, it can be a challenge to do so without a mouse and keyboard, in part because you need to do a lot of navigation.

I personally believe Cursorless solves that problem better than a keyboard and mouse, but I have to imagine I'm a bit biased on that point :)

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#67

Post by wmf »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #24

Once automatic speech recognition (ASR) gets closer to bullet-proof, I expect this to become a huge thing, but right now, it seems like you're getting better error rates than typical. Any input method where you frequently have to repeat yourself and undo things won't get mainstream. I'd bet people's mainstream tolerance for errors would have to be like one per five to ten minutes before you could get them to really a…

The problem is that bulletproof speech recognition will only be available as a cloud service and maybe only wrapped in a Siri-style "assistant" UI. You probably won't be able to use it to replace things like Dragon.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#68

Post by maxore44 »

pokeyrule wrote: post #66
jbellis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What distinction are you trying to make between "programming" (fast) and "editing code" (slow) ?

I think the distinction is "programming" refers to just dictating some code from scratch. "editing code" refers to changing code that is already written. For the former ("programming"), there are many commands that can be used to rapidly output code. For example, a user can say "funky hello world" to get something like function helloWorld() { } But if you're trying to edit code that already exists, it can be a challe…

Yes, exactly right. The vast majority of programming is editing code, and cursorless allows you to A) Navigate code quickly and B) do things using less navigation than you could with Keyboard/Mouse.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

#70

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

warrenm wrote: post #61
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I did hands-free coding, I named my variables things that I could say as words. So you'd be saying 'copy file-num-one file-num-two' or something, rather than spelling it out letter by letter. I actually ended up naming things more verbose names because I didn't have to type it all out. So it might be: enunciating: 'copy snake-geary-street-financial-report snake-divisadero-street-financial-report' versus typing:…

tab completion handles goofy and long file names quite handily ... and lot faster than speaking

Tab completion relies on a limited context. If you're trying to type gearyStreetFinancialReport and the two names in context are gearyStreetFinancialReport and unrelated, you're right, but if there's a very large number of choices, it benefits you less. And new names aren't going to be in context, so even in the best case of my example, you're going to end up typing:

'cp g-[TAB] divisaderoStreetFinancialReport'

I'd expect that to be an advantage of voice stuff; that you can go fast in new kinds of large scope contexts, maybe even whole-machine context. A system designed from the ground up could exploit that in interesting ways.

Post reply on HN