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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

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'd want to spend all day doing it that way, but rather than fighting with voice recognition for misunderstood homonyms, just fall back on individual keys.

lunixbochs 7y ago
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 them “too fast” in a stream without gaps, and I tested them extensively to make sure I picked words that didn’t clog up your mouth too much. The result is I can type 58wpm for short bursts using the alphabet alone, which is enough to play ztype, write entire words that would be hard to dictate, and control vim directly without an additional command set. The base alphabet is: 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 Go ahead, see how fast you can read the alphabet in order. Then try reading it even faster, blurring the word boundaries together a bit. You can still tell the words apart! Some people change a couple of words if they don’t work well in their accent, but the base idea holds strong.
- Hasnep 7y ago
  How do you pronounce jury as one syllable word? I'm finding it difficult to imagine.
  - shagbag 7y ago
    You could pronounce it as jree. Like tree with a j.
    - lunixbochs 7y ago
      Yes, kinda like that. Also see my sibling comment.
- 22c 7y ago
  > 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.
  - lunixbochs 7y ago
    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.
    - kylec 7y ago
      How about "joy"?
      - lunixbochs 7y ago
        See sibling for testing methodology. It seems good at face value to me, however I did stumble a bit when doing the full alphabet out loud test with it (joy air, joy bat, joy crunch, etc...). I think there’s a harder to quantify component that causes the stumbles/tongue twisting, that is where your mouth/tongue position ends up when you finish speaking the letter.
    - streb-lo 7y ago
      juke would work and not break any other phonemes.
- pbalau 7y ago
  Why not the NATO alphabet? It is designed so the accent doesn't matter.
  - lunixbochs 7y ago
    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.
vchak1 7y ago
This would go very well with APL.
melling 7y ago
With good autocompletion this would work in many instances. I’d like to save my voice from spelling the entire word. Often I don’t need to type more than a letter or two before I can select the desired variable, type name, etc.

lunixbochs 7y ago

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 them “too fast” in a stream without gaps, and I tested them extensively to make sure I picked words that didn’t clog up your mouth too much. The result is I can type 58wpm for short bursts using the alphabet alone, which is enough to play ztype, write entire words that would be hard to dictate, and control vim directly without an additional command set. The base alphabet is: 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 Go ahead, see how fast you can read the alphabet in order. Then try reading it even faster, blurring the word boundaries together a bit. You can still tell the words apart! Some people change a couple of words if they don’t work well in their accent, but the base idea holds strong.

Hasnep 7y ago
How do you pronounce jury as one syllable word? I'm finding it difficult to imagine.
- shagbag 7y ago
  You could pronounce it as jree. Like tree with a j.
  - lunixbochs 7y ago
    Yes, kinda like that. Also see my sibling comment.
22c 7y ago
> 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.
- lunixbochs 7y ago
  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.
  - kylec 7y ago
    How about "joy"?
    - lunixbochs 7y ago
      See sibling for testing methodology. It seems good at face value to me, however I did stumble a bit when doing the full alphabet out loud test with it (joy air, joy bat, joy crunch, etc...). I think there’s a harder to quantify component that causes the stumbles/tongue twisting, that is where your mouth/tongue position ends up when you finish speaking the letter.
  - streb-lo 7y ago
    juke would work and not break any other phonemes.
pbalau 7y ago
Why not the NATO alphabet? It is designed so the accent doesn't matter.
- lunixbochs 7y ago
  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.

vchak1 7y ago

This would go very well with APL.

melling 7y ago

With good autocompletion this would work in many instances. I’d like to save my voice from spelling the entire word. Often I don’t need to type more than a letter or two before I can select the desired variable, type name, etc.