5 ms·

This is really cool and an inspiration of mine. As a matter of fact I am working on something very similar to this. I don't know if you are familiar with the D

by rijoja 8y ago

This is really cool and an inspiration of mine. As a matter of fact I am working on something very similar to this. I don't know if you are familiar with the Dasher project for text input, but as of know I'm trying to improve on that work partly by improving on how many letters are available simultaneously by protecting the line of text upon a fractal surface. Something that should be a more efficient use of a 2d surface, theoretically infinitely so. As far as autocomplete is concerned my approach is to try to do exactly this but on a character basis. I think this can lead to some interesting advantages, for example different dialects gives rise to words that not always conform to dictionary specifications. The next level would be to go one step higher so to speak. If we imagine Markov Chain on letters as the first level and said chains level, I'd say that the third level in our hierarchy would be to apply markov chain on groups of words grouped by proximity in a word2vec space. Having markov chains working on groups of word2vec words would give us a statistical analogy of grammar. However without having to implement it programatically, something that inevitably would lead to missed corner cases and if not that a too strict algorithm that would hinder intentional abuse of grammar by purpose. Maybe this is already being implemented, as it to me seems as the logical next step. Anybody got any info on this?

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
I am familiar with Dasher (although my only considerations regarding it are as a tool to improve user accessibility), but I don't understand what is meant by "protecting the line of text upon a fractal surface" Even if I change protecting to projecting I don't get it.
- rijoja 8y ago
  Woops what an embarrassing typo sorry about that. Well imagine if you would like to draw as many intervals of any given shape but with the same length on a line. Let's start out with a line. Then you can only have so many symbols given by the height. To continue if we instead where to space them out over the circumference of a circle, we would on the same width have more symbols. If we go even further and give the circle jagged edges that go in and out. Theoretically we have an infinite length on the line, but resolution on screen and eyes sets an stop to that. So basically making use of the area of the screen instead of only a line. Did I make more sense to you? The fractal thingy is just an experiment and not the main point of the comment so I gave a very brief description of it. It may very well be that my capabilities of describing it in proper mathematical is a bit lacking. Will have a demo of it within a few days or so if you are interested keep your eyes open.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    Ok thanks, I probably need to see it, not the most visual thinker so hard for me to envision the idea.
    - rijoja 8y ago
      Yeah at first I did this as a fun sideproject a fun way of doing something of absolutely no use to anybody. Then I thought of accessibility issues, now my focus is somewhat on VR, where I envision that keyboards will break the immersion and pointing and moving a pointer on a virtual keyboard would be fun for consumer tasks, but for actual work say programming and whatnot it simply doesn't cut it.
ben_w 8y ago
A friend of mine worked on Dasher (hi Alan, if you’re reading this!); I thought they achieved the same goal with a hyperbolic space rather than a fractal space? Given this was about a decade ago, there are probably better predictive models than whatever was in the demo he showed me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their model was a Markov chain where the size of each next-letter option was a function of probability. (Memory haze: I was more excited by the hyperbolic space than the word model when he showed it to me, and it was c. 2008)
- rijoja 8y ago
  I'd say that the prediction model that they are using basically would end up being the same as Markov chains. So if you just slide through a dasher structure set up with words you'd more or less get the most probable Markov chain output. Really I started this project before having any idea of the dasher so I'm coming from a bit different angle. My original idea was to make use of trees that are selected step by step, i.e. with discrete movements instead of continuous movement. So basically you'd have a tree that you step down through. The most frequent symbols would appear closer and as such have shorter paths describing them. https://www.bitchute.com/video/aKl7jUrtcOt8/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/aKl7jUrtcOt8/ As I see it the markov chain:ines is not the intent of the algorithm but rather a byproduct of it. I only heard of dasher last December, and my mind was blown. It was almost eerie how many things we had approached similarly. As for the rendering I am proposing I'm in the process of rewriting all my work up until now in nim as a form of advanced procrastination. But I aim at having a prototype up and running quite soon. One thing that could be optimised with in dasher is that some of the letters are not visible at all times. Why is this well, because they are drawn up on a line, so at best you can have sqrt(ww+hh)/font_height letters at a time, given a diagonal approach. Imagine instead that if we draw the line on the radius of a circle with the radius of w/2. Then we could have (pi*w/2)/font_height letters drawn out along that line at a time. However if we draw a fractal that more or less traces the same arc, the jagged edges would extend to an infinite surface. Of course we're still limited by resolution. Still the advantage here is that we make use of the 2-dimensional nature of the screen is put to use. From the edges that have no letter a deeper structure furthermore could be extended. The next advantage of this, where this becomes a synthesis of my more tree like structures, is that the most frequent letters could be placed closer to the cursor/player. As such the velocity on average by which the cursor travels would have to go through would be reduced by quite a lot. Sounds good in theory in my head. But you can't really be sure until you have it tested in code right. This will be out within the few coming days. B.t.w. I'm doing this research on my own, so if there is any interest in participation in any shape or form, be it suggestions, testing or whatever would be greatly appreciated. https://www.laarc.io/l/enow https://www.laarc.io/l/enow https://www.bitchute.com/channel/eruditenow/ https://www.bitchute.com/channel/eruditenow/ My rather playful first stab :D http://sigma.eruditenow.com/ http://sigma.eruditenow.com/

by rijoja 8y ago

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

I am familiar with Dasher (although my only considerations regarding it are as a tool to improve user accessibility), but I don't understand what is meant by "protecting the line of text upon a fractal surface" Even if I change protecting to projecting I don't get it.

rijoja 8y ago
Woops what an embarrassing typo sorry about that. Well imagine if you would like to draw as many intervals of any given shape but with the same length on a line. Let's start out with a line. Then you can only have so many symbols given by the height. To continue if we instead where to space them out over the circumference of a circle, we would on the same width have more symbols. If we go even further and give the circle jagged edges that go in and out. Theoretically we have an infinite length on the line, but resolution on screen and eyes sets an stop to that. So basically making use of the area of the screen instead of only a line. Did I make more sense to you? The fractal thingy is just an experiment and not the main point of the comment so I gave a very brief description of it. It may very well be that my capabilities of describing it in proper mathematical is a bit lacking. Will have a demo of it within a few days or so if you are interested keep your eyes open.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  Ok thanks, I probably need to see it, not the most visual thinker so hard for me to envision the idea.
  - rijoja 8y ago
    Yeah at first I did this as a fun sideproject a fun way of doing something of absolutely no use to anybody. Then I thought of accessibility issues, now my focus is somewhat on VR, where I envision that keyboards will break the immersion and pointing and moving a pointer on a virtual keyboard would be fun for consumer tasks, but for actual work say programming and whatnot it simply doesn't cut it.

ben_w 8y ago

A friend of mine worked on Dasher (hi Alan, if you’re reading this!); I thought they achieved the same goal with a hyperbolic space rather than a fractal space? Given this was about a decade ago, there are probably better predictive models than whatever was in the demo he showed me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their model was a Markov chain where the size of each next-letter option was a function of probability. (Memory haze: I was more excited by the hyperbolic space than the word model when he showed it to me, and it was c. 2008)

rijoja 8y ago
I'd say that the prediction model that they are using basically would end up being the same as Markov chains. So if you just slide through a dasher structure set up with words you'd more or less get the most probable Markov chain output. Really I started this project before having any idea of the dasher so I'm coming from a bit different angle. My original idea was to make use of trees that are selected step by step, i.e. with discrete movements instead of continuous movement. So basically you'd have a tree that you step down through. The most frequent symbols would appear closer and as such have shorter paths describing them. https://www.bitchute.com/video/aKl7jUrtcOt8/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/aKl7jUrtcOt8/ As I see it the markov chain:ines is not the intent of the algorithm but rather a byproduct of it. I only heard of dasher last December, and my mind was blown. It was almost eerie how many things we had approached similarly. As for the rendering I am proposing I'm in the process of rewriting all my work up until now in nim as a form of advanced procrastination. But I aim at having a prototype up and running quite soon. One thing that could be optimised with in dasher is that some of the letters are not visible at all times. Why is this well, because they are drawn up on a line, so at best you can have sqrt(ww+hh)/font_height letters at a time, given a diagonal approach. Imagine instead that if we draw the line on the radius of a circle with the radius of w/2. Then we could have (pi*w/2)/font_height letters drawn out along that line at a time. However if we draw a fractal that more or less traces the same arc, the jagged edges would extend to an infinite surface. Of course we're still limited by resolution. Still the advantage here is that we make use of the 2-dimensional nature of the screen is put to use. From the edges that have no letter a deeper structure furthermore could be extended. The next advantage of this, where this becomes a synthesis of my more tree like structures, is that the most frequent letters could be placed closer to the cursor/player. As such the velocity on average by which the cursor travels would have to go through would be reduced by quite a lot. Sounds good in theory in my head. But you can't really be sure until you have it tested in code right. This will be out within the few coming days. B.t.w. I'm doing this research on my own, so if there is any interest in participation in any shape or form, be it suggestions, testing or whatever would be greatly appreciated. https://www.laarc.io/l/enow https://www.laarc.io/l/enow https://www.bitchute.com/channel/eruditenow/ https://www.bitchute.com/channel/eruditenow/ My rather playful first stab :D http://sigma.eruditenow.com/ http://sigma.eruditenow.com/