[OT] unbelievable: #ifdef _OTHER_LIB_H

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 27 November 2014 at 07:16:17 UTC, ketmar via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> i just imagined some sort of i... human standing against the 
> wall,
> gesticulating like mad and talking nonsense to the void... 
> creepy.

Do you think most people don't find it creepy now, when they see 
you staring into the glow of your monitor with your fingers madly 
thrumming away at a keyboard? ;)

> i bet that such intefaces will be widespread, but faster and 
> more
> usable? nope. i can type much faster than i'm talking, i can 
> edit what
> i typed and... and just won't buy it. but yes, they *seems* to 
> be
> better than plain old keyboard.

You would have to be a very slow talker if you could type faster. 
  You can edit what you spoke with voice commands too, people do 
it now.

On Thursday, 27 November 2014 at 08:17:03 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
> On Thursday, 27 November 2014 at 06:51:00 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> That's because GUIs are not aimed at highly technical power 
>> users
>> like you, but for most people, who don't want to memorize a 
>> bunch
>> of technical commands and barely know how to type.  They would 
>> be
>> much slower with ratpoison and a terminal than you are with a
>> GUI. ;)
>
>
> I hear that false dichotomy so many time that I lost count. 
> That's is an idiotic mindset. You can have a gui that is also 
> manipulable all via keyboard in an efficient manner.
>
> gnome-do is a good example of this:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTxqE3M1k0U
>
> Because of that mindset, we are in 2014 and all terminal 
> emulator are complete garbage to the point I ended up coding my 
> own (which is garbage as well but at least does what I do and I 
> can fix it when it doesn't, and it is in D :) ).

Except I never said you couldn't have keyboard-manipulable GUIs, 
just that that's not the norm, as you yourself admit, because 
most people don't want to learn how to use those either.  
gnome-do looks nice: I often use the search box in the Windows 
Start menu to launch applications and get into the right system 
settings, ie by using the keyboard.

On Thursday, 27 November 2014 at 14:56:49 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
wrote:
> On Thursday, 27 November 2014 at 06:51:00 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> However, I'm looking forward to voice recognition
>
> I hate voice recognition because it doesn't actually think 
> about what you're saying... it is just another way to input 
> crude information into the same idiotic core, and keyboard 
> symbols are better.

Well, the "idiotic core" is common to either input, and most 
people talk much faster than they can type:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

> What would be interesting - though not something I want in the 
> real world, I kinda enjoy getting my paycheck - is a voice AI 
> like they have in Star Trek.
>
> "Computer, I need a terminal emulator."
>
> a few beeps, then it pops one up
>
> "No, that sucks, make the mouse wheel work."
>
> the computer beeps as it looks at existing things to figure out 
> what you meant by "work" then adjusts the program
>
>
> Self-programming computers, now *that's* a voice interface.

We still have some way to go to get the computer to accurately 
translate all normally spoken speech to text, gotta get that done 
first.

On Thursday, 27 November 2014 at 18:11:03 UTC, H. S. Teoh via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 02:56:48PM +0000, Adam D. Ruppe via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Thursday, 27 November 2014 at 06:51:00 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> >However, I'm looking forward to voice recognition
>> 
>> I hate voice recognition because it doesn't actually think 
>> about what
>> you're saying... it is just another way to input crude 
>> information
>> into the same idiotic core, and keyboard symbols are better.
>
> +1000!! I can communicate with my computer in far more 
> efficiently and
> in a far more precise way than I can speak within the same 
> time. I mean,
> if I wanted to say:
>
> 	const(int[]) myFunc(T)(const(T)[] input) { ... }
>
> what would I have to pronounce? "const open parenthesis int 
> open square
> bracket close square bracket close parenthesis space em why 
> capital eff
> you en see open parenthesis capital tee close parenthesis open
> parenthesis const open parenthesis tee close parenthesis open 
> square
> bracket close square bracket space input close parenthesis 
> space open
> brace ..." ??
>
> And what of Vim editing commands? "Move 5 lines down, 6 words 
> to the
> right, 2 characters to the right, substitute next 5 characters, 
> aye bee
> see dee ee, end, save file"? I could type 
> "5j6w2l5sabcde<ESC>:wq<enter>"
> in a fraction of the time.

Do you actually sit there and count the number of lines, words, 
and characters so you can type out a command like that?  Sounds 
tedious, I'd just use search to jump to the word, ie 
"/uvwxyz<enter>", then replace the letters.  Similarly, you'd 
say, "Go to uvwxyz and replace with abcde<pause>save and quit."  
I'd be done with that long before you're done counting out the 
number of words to the right. ;) As for programming, language 
syntax is currently optimized for keyboard input, it will have to 
be redone for voice input.

> Not to mention how many times I'd have to correct the speech 
> recognizer
> software which will inevitably get half the characters wrong 
> because of
> ambiguous pronunciation (by "queue" do you mean Q-U-E-U-E or 
> the letter
> Q?).

There are heuristics that can get such homonyms right based on 
the context.  As voice recognition advances, they are being 
applied and increasing accuracy by leaps and bounds.  One nice 
consequence of the current mobile boom is that a ton of work is 
getting put into improving the speech recognition engines of 
Google Now, Siri, and Cortana.

> Please, give me a keyboard anytime.

Only if you want to go really slow, like people who still write 
stuff out longhand or use mechanical typewriters these days. :) 
Take a look at the wpm numbers I linked above, voice is much 
faster than typing and recognition is becoming much more accurate.