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community

Voice command set for Talon, community-supported.

(Originally called knausj_talon, after its original creator 🦸)

Can be used on its own, but shines when combined with:

  • Cursorless for programming and text editing
  • Rango for browser navigation
  • gaze-ocr for advanced cursor control using eye tracking and text recognition (OCR)
  • AXKit (macOS only) to enhance Talon with native OS accessibility integrations
  • Other user file sets

Installation

Prerequisites

  • Talon
  • Mac, Windows, or Linux
  • Talon's built-in Conformer (wav2letter) speech recognition engine (recommended), or Dragon NaturallySpeaking (Windows) / Dragon for Mac (although beware that Dragon for Mac is discontinued and its use deprecated).

Includes commands for working with an eye tracker; an eye tracker is not required.

Linux & Mac

It is recommended to install community using git.

  1. Install git

  2. Open a terminal (Mac / Ubuntu)

  3. Paste the following into the terminal window then press Enter/Return:

    cd ~/.talon/user
git clone https://github.com/talonhub/community community

Note that it is also possible to install community by downloading and extracting a zip file, but this approach is discouraged because it makes it more difficult to keep track of any changes you may make to your copy of the files.

Windows

It is recommended to install community using git.

  1. Install git

  2. Open a command prompt

  3. Paste the following into the command prompt window then press Enter:

    cd %AppData%\Talon\user
git clone https://github.com/talonhub/community community

Note that it is also possible to install community by downloading and extracting a zip file, but this approach is discouraged because it makes it more difficult to keep track of any changes you may make to your copy of the files.

Getting started with Talon

  1. help active displays commands available in the active (frontmost) application.
    • Available commands can change by application, or even the window title.
    • Navigate help by voice using the displayed numbers (e.g., help one one or help eleven to open the item numbered 11), or by speaking button titles that don't start with numbers (e.g., help next to see the next page of contexts).
    • Help-related commands are defined in help.talon and help_open.talon.
  2. Search for commands by saying help search <phrase>. For example, help search tab displays all tab-related commands, and help search help displays all help-related commands.
  3. Jump immediately to help for a particular help context with the name displayed the in help window (based on the name of the .talon file), e.g. help context symbols or help context visual studio
  4. help alphabet displays words for letters of the alphabet; help symbols displays words for symbols.
  5. command history toggles display of recent voice commands.
  6. help format displays available formatters with examples.
  7. Many useful, basic commands are defined in edit.talon.
    • undo that and redo that are the default undo/redo commands.
    • paste that, copy that, and cut that for pasting/copy/cutting, respectively.
  8. For community-generated documentation on Talon itself, please visit https://talon.wiki/.

It's recommended to learn the alphabet first, then get familiar with the keys, symbols, formatters, mouse, and generic_editor commands.

Once you have the basics of text input down, try copying some code from one window to another.

After that, explore using ordinal repetition for easily repeating a command without pausing (e.g., saying go up fifth will go up five lines), window switching (focus chrome), and moving around in your text editor of choice.

If you use vim, just start with the numbers and alphabet, otherwise look at generic_editor.talon as well at jetbrains, vscode, and any other integrations.

Alphabet

The alphabet is defined in this Talon list file.

Say help alphabet to open a window displaying the alphabet. help close closes the window.

Try saying e.g. air bat cap to insert abc.

Keys

All key commands are defined in keys.talon. Say letters of the Talon alphabet for A–Z.

For modifier keys, say help modifiers. For example, say shift air to press shift-a, which types a capital A.

For symbols, say help symbols. These are defined in keys.py; search for modifier_keys and then keep scrolling — roughly starting here.

On Windows, try commands such as:

  • control air to press Control+A and select all.

  • super-shift-sun to press Win+Shift+S, triggering the screenshot application (Windows 10). Then try escape to exit.

On Mac, try commands such as:

  • command air to press ⌘A and select all.

  • control shift command 4 to press ⌃⇧⌘4, copying a screenshot of the selected area to the clipboard. Then try escape to exit. Please note the order of the modifiers doesn't matter.

Say any combination of modifiers, symbols, alphabet, numbers and function keys to execute keyboard shortcuts. Modifier keys can be tapped using press, for example press control taps the Control (⌃) key by itself.

Symbols

Some symbols are defined in keys.py, so you can say, e.g. control colon to press those keys.

Multi-character punctuation (e.g., ellipses) is defined in symbols.talon.

Formatters

Formatters allow you to insert words with consistent capitalization and punctuation. help format displays available formatters with examples of their output when followed by one two three.

Try using a formatter by saying snake hello world. This inserts "hello_world".

Multiple formatters can be chained together — for example, dubstring snake hello world inserts "hello_world".

Prose formatters (marked with * in the help window) preserve hyphens and apostrophes. Non-prose (code) formatters strip punctuation instead, for example to generate a valid variable name. title how's it going inserts "How's It Going"; hammer how's it going inserts "HowsItGoing".

Reformat existing text with one or more formatters by selecting it, then saying the formatter name(s) followed by that. Say help reformat to display how each formatter reformats one_two_three.

Formatter names (snake, dubstring) are defined here. Formatter-related commands are defined in text.talon.

Mouse commands

See mouse.talon for commands to click, drag, scroll, and use an eye tracker. To use a grid to click at a certain location on the screen, see mouse_grid.

Generic editing commands

Editing commands in edit.talon are global. Commands such as go word left will work in any text box that uses standard platform text navigation conventions.

Repeating commands

Voice commands for repeating commands are defined in repeater.talon.

Say go up fifth or go up five times to go up five lines. select up third will press Shift+Up three times to select several lines of text.

Window management

Global window managment commands are defined in window_management.talon.

  • running list toggles a window displaying words you can say to switch to running applications. To customize the spoken forms for an app (or hide an app entirely from the list), edit the app_name_overrides_<platform>.csv files in the core/app_switcher directory.
  • focus chrome will focus the Chrome application.
  • launch music will launch the music application. Note this is currently only implemented on macOS.

Screenshot commands

See screenshot.talon.

Programming languages

Specific programming languages may be activated by voice commands, or via title tracking.

Activating languages via commands will enable the commands globally, e.g. they'll work in any application. This will also disable the title tracking method (code.language in .talon files) until the "clear language modes" voice command is used.

Commands for enabling languages are defined in language_modes.talon.

By default, title tracking activates languages in supported applications such as VSCode, Visual Studio (requires plugin), and Notepad++.

To enable title tracking for your application:

  1. Ensure the active filename (including extension) is included in the window title.
  2. Implement the required Talon-defined filename action to correctly extract the filename from the window title. See the Visual Studio Code implementation for an example.

Python, C#, Talon and JavaScript language support is broken up into multiple tags in an attempt to standardize common voice commands for features available across languages. Each tag is defined in a .talon file named after a user.code_ tag (e.g., user.code_functions → functions.talon) containing voice commands and a Python file declaring the actions that should be implemented by each concrete language implementation to support the voice commands. These files include:

  • lang/tags/comment_block.{talon,py} - block comments (e.g., C++'s /* */)
  • lang/tags/comment_documentation.{talon,py} - documentation comments (e.g., Java's /** */)
  • lang/tags/comment_line.{talon,py} - line comments (e.g., Python's #)
  • lang/tags/data_null.{talon,py} - null & null checks (e.g., Python's None)
  • lang/tags/data_bool.{talon,py} - booleans (e.g., Haskell's True)
  • lang/tags/functions.{talon,py} - functions and definitions
  • lang/tags/functions_common.{talon,py} - common functions (also includes a GUI for picking functions)
  • lang/tags/imperative.{talon,py} - statements (e.g., if, while, switch)
  • lang/tags/libraries.{talon,py} - libraries and imports
  • lang/tags/libraries_gui.{talon,py} - graphical helper for common libraries
  • lang/tags/object_oriented.{talon,py} - objects and classes (e.g., this)
  • lang/tags/operators_array.{talon,py} - array operators (e.g., Ruby's x[0])
  • lang/tags/operators_assignment.{talon,py} - assignment operators (e.g., C++'s x += 5)
  • lang/tags/operators_bitwise.{talon,py} - bitwise operators (e.g., C's x >> 1)
  • lang/tags/operators_lambda.{talon,py} - anonymous functions (e.g., JavaScript's x => x + 1)
  • lang/tags/operators_math.{talon,py} - numeric, comparison, and logical operators
  • lang/tags/operators_pointer.{talon,py} - pointer operators (e.g., C's &x)

Language-specific implementations of the above features are in files named lang/{your-language}/{your-language}.py.

To add support for a new language, ensure appropriate extension is added/uncommented in the language_extensions dictionary in language_modes.py. Then create the following files:

  • lang/{your-language}/{your-language}.py
  • lang/{your-language}/{your-language}.talon

Activate the appropriate tags in {your-language}.talon and implement the corresponding actions in {your-language}.py, following existing language implementations. Put additional voice commands for your language (not shared with other languages) in {your-language}.talon.

File manager commands

For the following file manager commands to work, your file manager must display the full folder path in the title bar. tags/file_manager/file_manager.talon

For the Mac Finder, run this command in Terminal to display the full path in the window title:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

For Windows Explorer, follow these directions.

For the Windows command line, the refresh title command will force the title to the current directory, and all directory commands (follow 1) will automatically update the title.

Notes:

  • Both Windows Explorer and Finder hide certain files and folders by default, so it's often best to use the imgui to list the options before issuing commands.

  • If there no hidden files or folders, and the items are displayed in alphabetical order, you can typically issue the follow <number>, file <number> and open <number> commands based on the displayed order.

To implement support for a new program, implement the relevant file manager actions for your application and assert the user.file_manager tag. There are a number of example implementations in the repository. Finder is a good example to copy and mdoify.

Terminal commands

Many terminal applications are supported out of the box, but you may not want all the commands enabled.

To use command sets in your terminal applications, enable/disable the corresponding tags in the terminal application-specific .talon file.

tag(): user.file_manager
tag(): user.git
tag(): user.kubectl
tag(): user.tabs

For instance, kubectl commands (kubernetes) aren't relevant to everyone.

Note also that while some of the command sets associated with these tags are defined in talon files within tags, others, like git, are defined within apps. Commands for tabs are defined in tabs.talon.

Unix utilities

If you have a Unix (e.g. macOS) or Linux computer, you can enable support for a number of common terminal utilities like cat, tail, or grep by uncommenting the following line in unix_shell.py:

# ctx.tags = ["user.unix_utilities"]

Once you have uncommented the line, you can customize your utility commands by editing tags/terminal/unix_utility.talon-list.

Jetbrains commands

For Jetbrains commands to work you must install https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/10504-voice-code-idea into each editor.

Additional commands

There are other commands not described fully within this file. As an overview:

  • The apps folder has command sets for use within different applications
  • The core folder has various commands described here
  • The lang folder has commands for writing programming languages
  • The plugin folder has various commands described here
  • The tags folder has various other commands, such as using a browser, navigating a filesystem in terminal, and managing multiple cursors

Settings

Several options are configurable via a single settings file out of the box. Any setting can be made context specific as needed (e.g., per-OS, per-app, etc).

The most commonly adjusted settings are probably

  • imgui.scale to improve the visibility of all imgui-based windows (help, history, etc). This is simply a scale factor, 1.3 = 130%.

  • user.help_max_command_lines_per_page and user.help_max_contexts_per_page to ensure all help information is visible.

  • user.mouse_wheel_down_amount and user.mouse_continuous_scroll_amount for adjusting the scroll amounts for the various scroll commands.

Customizing words and lists

Most lists of words are provided as Talon list files, with an extension of .talon-list. Read about the syntax of these files on the Talon wiki.

Some lists with multiple spoken forms/alternatives are instead provided as CSV files. Some are in the settings folder and are not created until you launch Talon with community installed.

You can customize common Talon list and CSV files with voice commands: say the word customize followed by abbreviations, additional words, alphabet, homophones, search engines, Unix utilities, websites or words to replace. These open the file in a text editor and move the insertion point to the bottom of the file so you can add to it.

You can also add words to the vocabulary or replacements (words_to_replace) by using the commands in edit_vocabulary.talon.

💡 Tip: Overriding cleanly

You can override Talon lists by creating a new .talon-list file of your own, rather than changing the existing list in the repository. This reduces how much manual git merge-ing you'll have to do in the future, when you go to merge new versions of this repository (colloquially called "upstream") with your local changes. This is because new files you create will almost never conflict with upstream changes, whereas changing an existing file (especially hot spots, like commonly-customized lists) frequently do. Your override files can even live outside of the community repository (anywhere in the Talon user directory), if you prefer, further simplifying merging. To do so, simply create a .talon-list file with a more specific context header than the default. (For example, lang: en or os: mac main). Talon ensures that the most specific header (your override file) wins.

For example, to override user.modifier_key, you could create modifier_keys_MYNAME.talon:

list:  user.modifier_key
language: en
-

# My preferred modifier keys
rose: cmd
troll: control
shift: shift
alt: alt

Other Talon user file sets

In addition to this repo, there are other Talon user file sets containing additional commands that you may want to experiment with if you're feeling adventurous 😊. Many of them are meant to be used alongside community, but a few of them are designed as replacements. If it's not clear which, please file an issue against the given GitHub repository for that user file set!

Collaborators

This repository is now officially a team effort. The following contributors have direct access:

  • @dwiel
  • @fidgetingbits
  • @knausj85
  • @rntz
  • @splondike
  • @pokey

Collaborators will reply to issues and pull requests as time and health permits. Please be patient.

Guidelines for collaborators

  1. Collaborators prioritize their health and their personal/professional needs first. Their time commitment to this effort is limited.
  2. For "minor" fixes and improvements/bugs/new apps, collaborators are free to contribute without any review
  3. For "significant" new development and refactors, collaborators should seek appropriate input and reviews from each-other. Collaborators are encouraged to open a discussion before committing their time to any major effort.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for our guidelines for contributors

Automatic formatting/linters

This repository uses pre-commit to run and manage its formatters/linters. Running these yourself is optional. If you wish to do so, first install pre-commit:

$ pip install pre-commit

You then have a few options as to when to run it:

  • Run yourself at any time on your locally changed files: pre-commit run
  • Run yourself on all files in the repository: pre-commit run --all-files
  • Run automatically on your PRs (fixes will be pushed automatically to your branch):
  • Set up an editor hook to run on save:
    • You could follow the instructions for Black, which are well written; simply replace black <path> with pre-commit run --files <file>.
    • It's more performant to only reformat the specific file you're editing, rather than all changed files.
  • Install a git pre-commit hook with pre-commit install (optional)
    • This essentially runs pre-commit run automatically before creating local commits, applying formatters/linters on all changed files. If it "fails", the commit will be blocked.
    • Note that because many of the rules automatically apply fixes, typically you just need to stage the changes that they made, then reattempt your commit.
    • Whether to use the hook comes down to personal taste. If you like to make many small incremental "work" commits developing a feature, it may be too much overhead.

If you run into setup difficulty with pre-commit, you might want to ensure that you have a modern Python 3 local environment first. pyenv is good way to install such Python versions without affecting your system Python (recommend installing 3.9 to match Talon's current version). On macOS you can also brew install pre-commit.

Automated tests

There are a number of automated unit tests in the repository. These are all run outside of the Talon environment (e.g. we don't have access to Talon's window management APIs). These make use of a set of stubbed out Talon APIs in test/stubs/ and a bit of class loader trickery in conftest.py.

To run the test suite you just need to install the pytest python package in to a non-Talon Python runtime you want to use for tests (i.e. don't install in the ~/.talon/.venv directory). You can then just run the pytest command from the repository root to execute all the tests.

Talon documentation

For official documentation on Talon's API and features, please visit https://talonvoice.com/docs/.

For community-generated documentation on Talon, please visit https://talon.wiki/.

Alternate installation method: Zip file

It is possible to install community by downloading and extracting a zip file instead of using git. Note that this approach is discouraged, because it makes it more difficult to keep track of any changes you may make to your copy of the files.

If you wish to install community by downloading and extracting a zip file, proceed as follows:

  1. Download the zip archive of community.
  2. Extract the files. If you don’t know how to extract zip files, a quick google search for "extract zip files" may be helpful.
  3. Place these extracted files inside the user folder of the Talon Home directory. You can find this folder by right-clicking the Talon icon in the taskbar (Windows) or clicking the Talon icon in the menu bar (Mac), clicking Scripting > Open ~/talon, and navigating to user.