Re: Disemvowelment Mode?

[Stefan Monnier]

Hi,

I don't touch type and never have gotten anywhere close to dictation, so
I'm probably not the best to give you ideas, but I just wanted to point
out that I don't understand why you'd find it desirable for the software
to remove the vowels that you did type.  From what I understand the
purpose is to speed up typing, so you want to reduce the amount of
typing that takes place rather than the amount of chars that get written
in the file, so a "Disemvowelment Mode" seems like it operates at the
wrong place.


        Stefan


Grant Rettke <grant@wisdomandwonder.com> writes:

> ** Disemvowelment Mode
>
> When I do voice dictation I can keep up but it is unpleasant for me because I
> have to type as fast as I can non-stop. I want to do a good job with the
> transcription (few to no corrections required) and keep my fingers, wrists,
> and mental health in tact.
>
> Here are some things I researched towards that goal and my take on them:
>
> - Use voice dictation software. Problem is that it can only handle perfect
>   American English. It chokes on everything else.
> - Use a faster keyboard layout. My setup is QWERTY and I am not going
> to change that.
> - Use the "jump back 15" seconds button to reprocess sections and correct what
>   you had written. That is a painful experience that interrupts your dictation
>   flow.
> - Use a speed-writing approach. Very interesting. Not Shorthand because it is
>   handwritten. Not Stenography because it is special hardware. Gregg Shorthand
>   might work (http://gregg.angelfishy.net/djbfs.shtml) although it seems to
>   require some handwritten parts. Problem with all of these is that they are
>   only readable by someone with training in that approach. My dictation need a
>   chance of someone else reading them, a good chance.
> - Disemvowel is a portmanteau for vowel and disembowel—removing all of the
>   vowels from a word for example
>   "Tell me about that new xylophone they purchased for the country club"
>   "Tll m bt tht nw xylphn thy prchsd fr th cntry clb". This is nice because it
>   is simple and consistent. Your writing program can enforce this for you.
>   Human thought is not required. Those are its strengths and weaknesses
>   though—sometimes it is painful to read when it doesn't need to be. For
>   example
>   "Knock one more time then tell me yes or no"
>   "Knck n mr tm thn tll m ys r n"
>   is arguably just fine, or maybe not. My gt flng s tht thr s
>   smthng bttr, vn f nly jst lttl bt.
> - When I sit down and try to only use vowels I can do a better job then a
>   program. I know that sometimes using a vowel makes total sense. For example
>   "See me" becomes either a bad "S m" or OK "Se me" when I do it. The
>   simplistic disemvowelment approach won't work here, and, that isn't
>   surprising. It looks like there are some simple rules to make the process
>   better. For example if the word is only two letters and starts with a vowel
>   then it might be a good idea to leave it there. Another one is that if two
>   words next to each other are converted to single letters next to each other
>   then maybe they shouldn't be converted at all. There are things to consider
>   here. I don't know what they are or what works well. But I think that this
>   is part of the story.
>
> Here is the mental space for the writer I'm describing here
>
> - Groks the approach of removing vowels, but not always, because it needs to
>   be readable.
>
> The goal then is how to let the user just dictate and have to mode kind of
> make things a little more correct after they are written. Sometimes the writer
> can't do the mental translation fast enough and it would be easier to just
> type the entire word. This is the situation for this mode: to standardize the
> auto shorthand that keeps it true to how a human would do it.
>
> What I want to do here is to make a mode that will help me a writer avoid
> using vowels. The write would be typing along, making a point to avoid using
> vowels. But sometimes determine that they are necessary, so it has to let the
> writer type them in. The problem is that the writer won't always get it right
> while trying to type fast. As the user is writing, the mode would look back at
> the preview few words while it decides what to do with them.
>
> It seems like there are a few ways to help the writer here:
>
> 1. If it sees a word with vowels in it, and if you disemvoweled a word that it
>    only had 1 char remaining, then don't disemvovwel it.
> 2. If you see a word starts with a vowel, then leave it, but remove all
>    the other vowels following.
>
> Right now my ideas are not formed. They won't be until I try out the mode. I
> haven been typing like this manually and it works fine, I'm just tired of
> stopping and fixing the dictation because it doesn't look right (e.g. single
> letter words). It is a break in the flow and it really hurts. Reading about
> shorthand and also how people use abbreviations there are a lot of
> opportunities to speed things up. For example for 'and' use '.' Instead of
> 'nd' and '/' to close a sentence. Yes definitely but that is out of scope here
> for sake of keeping it simple.
>
> From what I read this problem seems like auto-completion, backwards, for one
> or two words, with no user interaction. I got this by reading about
> auto completion functionality in one of the modes. So that is where I would
> probably start.
>
> What do you think? Where is a good place to start? Is there sometime like this
> out there that I missed?
>
> Thank you for spending your time on reading this, and thoughts and feedback.