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Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

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Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#41

Post by olavk »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #38
nbevans wrote: post #13

Bear in mind this project was started around the same time there was a ton of uncertainty around the future of Silverlight and WPF. Alas, one did die, one lives on for now. But nobody knew that at the time, including Intel, or apparently Microsoft. WinForms has never faced any forward compatibility uncertainty so it is a good long-term bet.

You mean Silverlight died? I've seen that said over the years, but: A) Microsoft still mantains and updates silverlight. B) It's mentioned as one of the components of Windows 10[1]. So I'm really confused here as whether Microsoft will kill it already, or keep it alive. They seem to be willing to kill it[2][3], but Netflix alone is enough reason to keep it alive. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/d…

Dead can mean different things. Often it just means dead-end technology in the sense that MS does not intend to develop the technology further. Since MS have a strong focus on backwards compatibility, dead-end technologies often can keep running a very long time. VB6 for example is clearly a dead-end technology, but nobody prevents you from running and even developing VB6 apps.

Silverlight has been a dead-end technology for some time, but it will continue to be supported in Internet Explorer in "legacy mode". You can still run ActiveX-controls in IE (in legacy mode), so expect to be able to run Silverlight apps for the foreseeable future.

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#42

Post by acqq »

Is there Hawking's speech synthesis at all (there was an article that his voice is based on some hardware device http://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-gave-stephen-hawking-voic... )? I understand it's "just" a "navigation" system (replacing the mouse and keyboard with the facial movement virtual key). If it's so, the title (the "speech system") is misleading.

The project also doesn't use SwiftKey but

https://github.com/01org/acat

"Presage, an intelligent predictive text engine created by Matteo Vescovi."

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#43

Post by Pxtl »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #30
Pxtl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WinForms is not simple. There are so many core classes that have counterintuitive edge-cases and overcomplicated behavior, and so many things you'd expect to work by default don't. Databinding is a complete trainwreck, the Combo-box class is horribly overcomplicated by its double-duty as text-entry and drop-down-list, the DataGridView is a complete beast of leaky abstractions, and the layout engine completely falls a…

Sure. But - serious question - what offering from Microsoft would you replace it with?

I keep using it because I'm used to all its warts and idiosyncracies. So I don't know what properly-supported alternative one should use. I just get annoyed how many brand-new fresh-out-of-college developers I meet that use it. They need something better.

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#44

Post by twotwotwo »

melling wrote: post #4

Does it make sense to be more aggressive in predicting by giving the user a second level from which to choose? For example, if he types 'b', then it could offer to type 'black' or 'black hole'. On the iPad, for example, if I type 'f', I get shown 'for', then if I accept, I always see 'example' and 'instance'.

Suspect "sometimes, but rarely," because choosing "hole" after "black" is pretty cheap--you need your expected savings from potentially saving that choice to exceed the cost of bumping your worst option from the list. It's more likely to be practical when you can offer lots of choices rather than the typical three on mobile, though (bumping a 10th choice is cheaper than bumping a 3rd choice).

Separately, predefined phrases/templates can be really practical for things related to care, food, saying hi and bye, etc. That's a special case--user likely cares more about getting it done efficiently than choosing the exact wording they want each time.

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#45

Post by leetNightshade »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #38
nbevans wrote: post #13

Bear in mind this project was started around the same time there was a ton of uncertainty around the future of Silverlight and WPF. Alas, one did die, one lives on for now. But nobody knew that at the time, including Intel, or apparently Microsoft. WinForms has never faced any forward compatibility uncertainty so it is a good long-term bet.

You mean Silverlight died? I've seen that said over the years, but: A) Microsoft still mantains and updates silverlight. B) It's mentioned as one of the components of Windows 10[1]. So I'm really confused here as whether Microsoft will kill it already, or keep it alive. They seem to be willing to kill it[2][3], but Netflix alone is enough reason to keep it alive. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/d…

Netflix supports HTML5, they don't "need" Silverlight. https://gigaom.com/2014/11/26/netflix-silverlight-chrome/ https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#46

Post by datawaslost »

Presage is great, but to clarify some other comments - it doesn't involve any specific dataset, like SwiftKey - it simply does nice smoothed predictions when given a large database of n-grams (groups of words) and their frequencies. It's fairly easy to chop up a corpus into n-grams using NLTK or other tools, and there's a good port for Python called Pressagio.

My startup Spoken - http://spokenaac.com - uses n-gram predictions to help users with aphasia or other language disorders speak. The user interface challenges aren't quite as intense as Stephen Hawking's binary input, but it's an interesting field if you're into design and big data.

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#47

Post by jimmaswell »

Aleman360 wrote: post #29
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WinForms is still the easiest way to write desktop software quickly and easily. If you don't need a fancy UI for customer facing work, its a great platform for internal use.

... for some definition of "easiest." Maybe I would agree if you don't need to support a custom look-and-feel (Win32-looking apps don't really fly anymore), responsive layout, high DPI, touch/pen input, system theme colors, accessibility, localization, and haven't learned XAML. WPF and UWP apps are both far easier.

Win32 is the style that Windows apps are supposed to be and what people expect in a Windows app. What are you talking about? In what way does the win32 look "not fly"?

I've tried to use WPF and it was just a major pain and felt like a mess. There is no impediment to "responsiveness".

Where did you get the idea winforms apps don't follow the system colors?

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#48

Post by acqq »

acqq wrote: post #42

Is there Hawking's speech synthesis at all (there was an article that his voice is based on some hardware device http://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-gave-stephen-hawking-voic... )? I understand it's "just" a "navigation" system (replacing the mouse and keyboard with the facial movement virtual key). If it's so, the title (the " speech system") is misleading. The project also doesn't use SwiftKey but https://github.com…

It's seems that the company which owns "Paul" voice preset and DECtalk now is SpeechFX:

http://www.speechfxinc.com/dectalk.html

I don't know how different is that from CallText 5010 which was, as the Wired article states, eventually bought by Nuance Communications. Still, as per Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtalk

"The CallText 5010 is still listed on Hawking's site as of 2015.[9]"

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#49

Post by 0x37 »

Pxtl wrote: post #27
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #6

WinForms is still a great way to write desktop software if you don't need all the features of WPF, I just started a new project with it and have been really productive.

WinForms is not simple. There are so many core classes that have counterintuitive edge-cases and overcomplicated behavior, and so many things you'd expect to work by default don't. Databinding is a complete trainwreck, the Combo-box class is horribly overcomplicated by its double-duty as text-entry and drop-down-list, the DataGridView is a complete beast of leaky abstractions, and the layout engine completely falls a…

What a hyperbole of a comment. It really isn't that bad.

Re: Intel open sourced Stephen Hawking’s speech system

#50

Post by duncan_bayne »

Pxtl wrote: post #43
duncan_bayne wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But - serious question - what offering from Microsoft would you replace it with?

I keep using it because I'm used to all its warts and idiosyncracies. So I don't know what properly-supported alternative one should use. I just get annoyed how many brand-new fresh-out-of-college developers I meet that use it. They need something better.

Having used both WPF and Silverlight until 2010 (at which point I abandoned the Microsoft stack altogether) I agree, but I don't think the answer is either of those technologies.

Have you tried building GUI apps in Racket? That's the sort of thing I was wishing for when using either Java or .NET to build Windows GUIs.

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