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On Voice Coding

dusty.phillips.codes

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Re: On Voice Coding

#111

Post by gitgreen »

lunixbochs wrote: post #102
gitgreen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a very early(2007) and unintentionally humorous attempt to script in Perl with voice recognition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec

I know it’s funny, but I hate the prevalence of this video so much, because people reference it as a reason voice programming doesn’t work, and I think it discourages people who may have otherwise had success with voice programming. You should consider linking to the middle of Emily Shea’s PerlCon video where she first plays this video then shows that it’s actually possible to dictate the same code effectively.

I don't know which video you're referring to and a cursory search didn't turn it up. Perhaps you could link it?

Re: On Voice Coding

#112

Post by lunixbochs »

gitgreen wrote: post #111
lunixbochs wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it’s funny, but I hate the prevalence of this video so much, because people reference it as a reason voice programming doesn’t work, and I think it discourages people who may have otherwise had success with voice programming. You should consider linking to the middle of Emily Shea’s PerlCon video where she first plays this video then shows that it’s actually possible to dictate the same code effectively.

I don't know which video you're referring to and a cursory search didn't turn it up. Perhaps you could link it?

https://youtu.be/Mz3JeYfBTcY at 4:15 is when she plays the Perl Vista video

(note the fiddling around video playing isn’t a fundamental issue with voice input, google slides with video embeds turned out to be pretty unreliable with keyboard input and I believe that was ironed out in her later talks)

Re: On Voice Coding

#113

Post by lunixbochs »

tbenst wrote: post #27
qixxiq wrote: post #23

It's still surprising to see Dragon Speech Recognition as the recommended (and only) choice here. Is anyone working on decent speech recognition for Mac/Linux or know good resources for that? The ideal output is a stream of what could have been said, as well as some alternatives, each with a confidence. Every alternative I've tried has not been as effective as the version of Dragon I used from 2011. I think the focus…

The best alternative right now for voice coding is https://github.com/daanzu/kaldi-active-grammar . wav2letter is also under use by some, although requires more effort to setup

> wav2letter is also under use by some, although requires more effort to setup

This isn’t quite accurate. To my knowledge the options are: you are either using it in Talon and it just works, or you want to use it outside Talon and you will need to write entirely new glue code to add support for it in your project of choice.

Re: On Voice Coding

#114

Post by lunixbochs »

22c wrote: post #108
lunixbochs wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re exactly right, and this is something I put a lot of work into! I designed a new phonetic alphabet - the “Talon alphabet” - (which isn’t proprietary to Talon, people have used it with Caster as well). The trick is one-syllable words to represent each letter in the alphabet, but they have high phoneme diversity (sub-syllable unique sounds) and care was taken to ensure they can be differentiated even when saying…

> air bat cap drum each fine gust harp sit jury crunch look made near odd pit quench red sun trap urge vest whale plex yank zip How did you settle on jury? Notably it seems to be the only word that is more than one syllable.

I think it’s more like more like 1.5 syllables in practice? I had a hard time finding a short word in the J space that was phonetically diverse but also didn’t clog the mouth. It’s worth noting that when doing the thing I mention where you blend the words together to go faster, “sit jury crunch” can be spoken more like “sitch ury crunch” or even “sitch re crunch” and still recognized fine.

And see sibling thread suggesting “jree” like “tree”, which is similar to how it sounds when you’re going quickly.

Edit: For people suggesting new words, please read my comments downthread. Also the biggest complaint I’ve had about jury in practice is it can sound similar to “three”. Not a ton of words are spelled with J, and when doing vim input it’s faster to use numbers or a repeat command than say the letter repeatedly. So as it’s a lower priority word to trim half a syllable on, it’s worth getting it right if you’re going to change it.

The alphabet isn’t strict law, but it’s best to replace individual words after you’ve had specific problems with them and not before, as it’s hard to match the phonetic feel.

Re: On Voice Coding

#116

Post by pbalau »

lunixbochs wrote: post #100
russellbeattie wrote: post #93

Just want to point out a very accurate, yet completely inelegant solution to voice text input: Saying each letter and symbol individually. If you haven't tried it, you'll think I'm crazy, but it's amazing how fast computers can recognize individual letter names. You can just blurt them all out. I discovered this while entering a domain name by voice - just spell it out and poof, no problem, no corrections. Not sure I…

You’re exactly right, and this is something I put a lot of work into! I designed a new phonetic alphabet - the “Talon alphabet” - (which isn’t proprietary to Talon, people have used it with Caster as well). The trick is one-syllable words to represent each letter in the alphabet, but they have high phoneme diversity (sub-syllable unique sounds) and care was taken to ensure they can be differentiated even when saying…

Why not the NATO alphabet? It is designed so the accent doesn't matter.

Re: On Voice Coding

#117

Post by tcoff91 »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #79
melling wrote: post #2

“I type fast enough that I have never had much use for snippets in my text editor. Perhaps if I’d used them more effectively, I would not have developed the RSI symptoms that I have!" Often we have discussions about advanced code completion on HN. Many developers feel they don’t need it, or that it gets in their way, for example. Reading stories like this convinces me even more that our editors (tools) need to be sma…

I like the idea of TabNine, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be super well supported :( There are no news on whether it is being actively developed and the current implementation is unusable in a corporate environment because it can't dial home through a proxy so it refuses to activate the license. It's a shame too because it was basically a "shut up and take my money" reaction from me. I'd pay for this product. I'd…

It has a completely local option which is the default.

Re: On Voice Coding

#118

Post by lunixbochs »

pbalau wrote: post #116
lunixbochs wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re exactly right, and this is something I put a lot of work into! I designed a new phonetic alphabet - the “Talon alphabet” - (which isn’t proprietary to Talon, people have used it with Caster as well). The trick is one-syllable words to represent each letter in the alphabet, but they have high phoneme diversity (sub-syllable unique sounds) and care was taken to ensure they can be differentiated even when saying…

Why not the NATO alphabet? It is designed so the accent doesn't matter.

Because the nato alphabet is several times slower/more verbose and suited better for lossy radio links. We have a high quality mic hooked directly into our computer and the tradeoffs are completely different. Speed and vocal effort are more important than universality.

Re: On Voice Coding

#119

Post by vchak1 »

russellbeattie wrote: post #93

Just want to point out a very accurate, yet completely inelegant solution to voice text input: Saying each letter and symbol individually. If you haven't tried it, you'll think I'm crazy, but it's amazing how fast computers can recognize individual letter names. You can just blurt them all out. I discovered this while entering a domain name by voice - just spell it out and poof, no problem, no corrections. Not sure I…

This would go very well with APL.

Re: On Voice Coding

#120

Post by kylec »

lunixbochs wrote: post #114
22c wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> air bat cap drum each fine gust harp sit jury crunch look made near odd pit quench red sun trap urge vest whale plex yank zip How did you settle on jury? Notably it seems to be the only word that is more than one syllable.

I think it’s more like more like 1.5 syllables in practice? I had a hard time finding a short word in the J space that was phonetically diverse but also didn’t clog the mouth. It’s worth noting that when doing the thing I mention where you blend the words together to go faster, “sit jury crunch” can be spoken more like “sitch ury crunch” or even “sitch re crunch” and still recognized fine. And see sibling thread sugg…

How about "joy"?
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