WEBVTT captioned by sachac
NOTE Introduction
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Hi, I'm Blaine Mooers. I'm an associate professor
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of biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma
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Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.
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My lab studies the role of RNA structure in RNA editing.
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We use X-ray crystallography to study the structures
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of these RNAs. We spend a lot of time in the lab
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preparing our samples for structural studies,
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and then we also spend a lot of time at the computer
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analyzing the resulting data.
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I was seeking ways of using voice computing
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to try to enhance my productivity.
NOTE Three activities in voice computing
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I divide voice computing into three activities,
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speech-to-text or dictation, speech-to-commands,
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and speech-to-code. I'll be talking about
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speech-to-text and speech-to-commands today
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because these are two activities
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that are probably most broadly applicable
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to the workflows of people attending this conference.
NOTE Talk is not about ... and about ...
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This talk will not be about Emacspeak.
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This is a venerated program for converting text to speech.
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We're talking about the flow of information
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in the opposite direction, speech-to-text.
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We need an Emacs Listens. We don't have one,
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so I had to seek help from outside the Emacs world
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via the Voice In Plus. This runs in
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the Google Chrome web browser,
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and it's very good for speech-to-text
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and very easy to learn how to use.
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It also has some speech-to-commands.
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However, Talon Voice is much better
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with the speech-to-commands,
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and it's also great at speech-to-code.
NOTE Motivations
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The motivations are, obviously, as I mentioned already,
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for improved productivity.
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So, if you're a fast typist
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who types faster than they can speak,
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then nonetheless you might still benefit
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from voice computing when you grow tired of
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using the keyboard. On the other hand,
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you might be a slow typist who talks faster
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than they can type.
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In this case, you're definitely going to
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benefit from dictation because you'll be able to
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encode more words in text documents in a given day.
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If you're a coder, then you may get a kick out of
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opening programs and websites and coding projects
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by using your voice.
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Then there are health-related reasons.
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You may have impaired use of your hands, eyes, or both
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due to accident or disease, or you may suffer from
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a repetitive stress injury. Many of us have this
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in a mild but chronic form of it.
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We can't take a three-month sabbatical from the keyboard
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without losing our jobs, so these injuries tend to persist.
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And then you may have learned
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that it's not good for your health to sit
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for prolonged periods of time
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with your staring at a computer screen.
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You can actually dictate to your computer from 20 feet away
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while looking out the window,
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thereby giving your lower body a break
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and your eyes a break.
NOTE Data
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I'm not God, so I have to bring data.
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I have two data points here,
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the number of words that I wrote in June and July this year
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and in September and October.
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I adopted the use of voice computing
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in the middle of August. As you can see,
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I got an over three-fold increase in my output.
NOTE Voice In in the Chrome Store
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So this is the Chrome store website for voice-in.
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It's only available for Google Chrome.
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You just hit the install button to install it.
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To configure it, you need to select a language.
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It has support for 40 languages
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and it supports about a dozen different dialects of English,
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including Australian.
NOTE Works in web pages with text areas
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It works on web pages with text areas,
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so it works. I use it regularly
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on Overleaf and 750words.com,
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a distraction-free environment for writing.
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It also works in webmails. It works in Google.
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It works in Jupyter Lab, of course,
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because that runs in the browser.
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It also works in Jupyter Notebook and Colab Notebook.
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It should work in Cloudmacs.
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I've mapped option-L to opening Voice In
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when the cursor is on a web page that has a text area.
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So [the presence of a text area is] the main limiting factor.
NOTE Built-in commands in Voice In Plus
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[Voice In] has a number of built-in commands.
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You can turn it off by saying "stop dictation".
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It doesn't distinguish between
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a command mode and a dictation mode.
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It has undo command. You use the command
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"copy that" to copy a selection.
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The "press" commands are used in the browser.
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You [say] "press enter" to issue a command or [submit] text
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that has been written in a web form,
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and then "press tab" will open up the next tab
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in a web browser. The scroll up and down
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will allow you to navigate a web page.
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I've put together a quiz about these commands
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so that you can go through this quiz several times
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until you get at least 90 percent of them correct,
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90 percent of the questions correct.
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In order to boost your recall of the commands,
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I have a Python script that you can probably
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pound through the quiz with
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in less than a minute, once you know the commands.
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I also provide an Elisp version of this quiz,
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but it's a little slower to operate.
NOTE Common errors made by Voice In
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These are some common errors
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that I've run into with Voice In.
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It likes to contract statements like "I will" into "I'll".
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Contractions are not used in formal writing,
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and most of my writing is formal writing, so this annoys me.
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I will show you how I corrected for that problem.
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It also drops the first word in sentences quite often.
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This might be some speech issue that I have.
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It inserts the wrong word because it's not in the dictionary
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that was used to train it. So, for example,
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the word PyMOL is the name of a molecular graphics program
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that we use in our field. It doesn't recognize PyMOL.
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Instead, it substitutes in the word "primal".
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Since I don't use "primal" very often,
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I've mapped the word "primal" to "PyMOL"
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in some custom commands I'll talk about in a minute.
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Then there's a problem that the commands that exist
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might get executed when you speak them when, in fact,
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you wanted to use the words in those commands
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during your dictation.
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So this is a problem, a pitfall of Voice In,
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in that it doesn't have a command mode
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that's separate from a dictation mode.
NOTE Custom speech-to-text commands
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You can set up through a very easy-to-use GUI
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custom voice commands mapped to what you want inserted,
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so this is how misinterpreted words can be corrected.
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You just map the misinterpreted word to the intended word.
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You can also map the contractions to their expansions.
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I did this for 94 English contractions,
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and you can find these on GitHub.
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You can also insert acronyms and expand those acronyms.
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I apply the same approach to the first names of colleagues.
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I say "expand Fred", for example,
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to get Fred's first and last name
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with the [correct] spelling of his very long German name.
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You can also insert other trivia like favorite URLs.
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You can insert LaTeX snippets.
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It handles correctly multi-line snippets.
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You just have to enclose them in double quotes.
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You can even insert BibTeX cite keys for references
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that you use frequently. All fields
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have certain key references for certain methods or topics.
NOTE Custom speech-to-commands
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Then it has a set of commands that you can customize
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for the purpose of speech-to-commands
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to get the computer to do something
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like open up a specific website or save the current writing.
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In this case, we have "press: command-s"
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for saving current writing.
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You can change the language [with "lang:"],
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and you can change the case of the text [with "case:"].
NOTE Introducing Talon Voice
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But the speech-to-command repertoire is quite limited
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in Voice In, so it's now time to pick up on Talon Voice.
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This is an open source project. It's free.
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It is highly configurable via TalonScript,
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which is a subset of Python.
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You can use either TalonScript or Python to configure it,
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but it's easier to code up your configuration
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in TalonScript.
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It has a Python interpreter embedded in it,
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so you don't have to mess around with installing
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yet another Python interpreter.
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It runs on all platforms, and it has a dictation mode
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that's separate from a command mode.
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You can activate it,
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and it'll be in a listening state asleep.
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You just bark out "Talon Wake" to start to wake it up,
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and "Talon Sleep" to have it go into a listening state.
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It has a very welcoming community
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in the Talon Slack channel.
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Then I need to point out that there's several packages
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that others have developed that run on top of Talon,
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but one of particular note is by Pokey Rule.
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He has on his website some really well-done videos
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that demonstrate how he uses Cursorless
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to move the cursor around using voice commands.
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This, however, runs on VS Code.
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At least that's the text editor
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for which he's primarily developing Cursorless.
NOTE Talon GUI
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I followed the [install] protocol outlined by Tara Roys.
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She has a collection of tutorials
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on YouTube as well as on GitHub that are quite helpful.
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I followed her tutorial for installing
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Talon on macOS without any issues,
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but allow for half an hour to an hour
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to go through the process. When you're done,
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you'll have this Talon icon appear in the toolbar
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on the Mac. When it has this diagonal line across it,
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that means it's in the sleep state.
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So, this leads to cascading pull-down menus.
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This is it for the GUI.
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One of your first tasks is to select
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a language model that will be used to interpret
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the sounds that you generate as words.
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And the other kind of key feature is that there's a,
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under scripting, there's a view log pull-down
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that opens up a window displaying the log file.
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Whenever you make a change in a Talon configuration file,
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that change is implemented immediately.
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You do not have to restart Talon
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to get the change to take effect.
NOTE Talon file with web scope
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This is an example of a Talon file.
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It has two components. It has a header above the dash that describes
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the scope of the commands contained below the dash.
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Each command is separated by a blank line.
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If a voice command is mapped to multiple actions,
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these are listed separately on indented lines
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below the first line.
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The words that are in square brackets are optional.
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So, I have mapped the word toggle voice in,
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or the phrase toggle voice in,
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to the keyboard shortcut Alt L
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in order to toggle on or off voice in.
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If I toggle voice in on,
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I need to immediately toggle off Talon,
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and this is done through this key command for Control T,
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which is mapped to speech toggle.
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Speech toggle. Then there are,
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there's a couple other examples.
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So, if there's no header present,
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it's an optional feature of Talon files,
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then the commands in the file will apply in all situations,
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in all modes.
NOTE Terminals on remote and virtual machines
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Here we have two restrictions.
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These commands will only work
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when using the iTerm2 [ccc] terminal emulator for the Mac,
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and then only when the title of the window in iTerm2
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has this particular address,
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which is what appears when I've logged into
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the supercomputer at the University of Oklahoma.
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One of the commands in this file is checkjobs.
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It's mapped to an alias,
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a bash alias called cj for "check jobs",
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which in turn is mapped to a script called checkjobs.sh
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that, when it's run, returns a listing
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of the pending and running jobs on the supercomputer
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in a format that I find pleasing.
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This `\n` after cj, the new line character,
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enters the command, so I don't have to do that
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as an additional step. Likewise,
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here's a similar setup for interacting with
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a Ubuntu virtual machine.
NOTE Recommendations
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In terms of picking up voice computing,
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these are my recommendations.
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You're going to run into more errors
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than you may like initially,
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and so you need some patience in dealing with those.
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And also, it'll take you a while
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to get your head wrapped around Talon and how it works.
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You'll definitely want to use these custom commands
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to correct the errors or shortcomings
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of the language models. And you've seen how,
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by opening up projects by voice commands,
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you can reduce friction
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in terms of restarting work on a project.
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You've seen how Voice In is preferred
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for more accurate dictation.
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I think my error rate is about 1 to 2 percent.
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That is, 1 to 2 out of 100 words are incorrect
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versus Talon Voice where I think
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the error rate is closer to 5 percent.
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I have put together [a library of English] contractions
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[and their expansion] for Talon [too],
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and they can be found here on GitHub.
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And I also have [posted] a quiz of 600 questions
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about some basic Talon commands.
NOTE Acknowledgements
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I'd like to thank the people who've helped me out
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on the Talon Slack channel
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and members of the Oklahoma Data Science Workshop
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where I gave an hour-long talk on this topic
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several weeks ago.
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I'd like to thank my friends
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at the Berlin and Austin Emacs Meetup
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and at the M-x research Slack channel.
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And I thank these grant funding agencies
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for supporting my work. I'll be happy to take any questions.
