On 8/3/22 19:29, Jodin Morey wrote:
Hello Lyx Developers,
My name is Jodin, and I recently graduated with my doctorate in
mathematics. I have a disability which requires me to use voice
recognition to input mathematics into my computer. For the last 10
years or so, I have used three pieces of software (on Windows) to
accomplish this. However, recently two of these software packages
(Scientific Notebook and MathTalk) stopped being supported (the
underlying companies went out of business). As a result, I have been
looking for some other software I might be able to use. The voice
recognition software I use (the primary desktop voice recognition
software in existence) is Nuance Dragon Dictate. It was recently
purchased by Microsoft, so it is doubtful that this piece of software
will become unsupported anytime soon. However, there are no longer any
off-the-shelf software packages which translate the recognized words
into math, so I am interested in developing something along these
lines. In particular, I thought I might develop something around Lyx.
It's unfortunate that the voice technology allowing people with
disabilities to write mathematics has recently disappeared. I am
hopeful that Lyx can become the future provider of this capability.
I like Lyx because it is open source, and I wish to avoid relying on
another piece of software that is profit based, and might go out of
business someday. The idea is to create hundreds of scripts in Dragon
Dictate. That way, when I say "VarOmega," for example, Dragon Dictate
will turn my voice into words, recognize the words as a Dragon Dictate
Script, which can then choose from a pulldown menu on Lyx, or just
enter the right keystrokes.
The main barrier I face right now (other than the time it will take to
develop all of the scripts), is that many of the mathematical objects
in Lyx are not available either through a menubar or keystroke. So my
request to the developers would be to add keystroke accessibility to
as many mathematical objects as possible. To make things easier,
these keystrokes do not need to be documented in any way. You needn't
add the keystroke information on the user interface (for example, when
you hover your mouse over the button for the math object, or in the
help documentation). The point would not be to offer the average user
a quick keystroke. And to that end, the keystroke could be very
obscure (e.g., Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Meta+K), it doesn't need to be simple at
all. Doing this does not limit Dragon Dictate's ability to type the
keystroke, and simultaneously opens up a lot of keystrokes.
Regardless, I will start developing this the voice recognition
capacity with the keystrokes you currently have available, as I need
it for my own purposes. However, I believe developing this more
comprehensively is an important thing for the disability community.
And I believe the coding effort required is somewhat minimal.
LyX uses "bind" files to associate keystrokes with symbols or commands.
There is a file named "math.bind" that comes with LyX (found in
/usr/share/lyx/bind on Linux systems) that contains bindings for math
objects. It does not have a binding for \varOmega, but for instance the
key combo "alt+m g shift+E" (without the spaces) inserts \varepsilon.
The math.bind file is actually a child file, loaded by the main bind
file the user opts to use. In my case, that is cua.bind, located in the
same directory. (The user's choice of main bind file is made at Tools >
Preferences... > Editing > Shortcuts > Bind file.)
So someone (you?) could create an alternative version of math.bind with
a new name, adding whatever symbols you wish using obscure/unused
shortcuts, and then create a new version of a main bind file that loaded
the expanded math bind file. Alternatively, someone (you?) could put the
new definitions in a new file (say math2.bind) and then load math2.bind
in addition to math.bind from the main bind file of choice.
Paul
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