Feature Request: Capitalization Options

[Hate9]

I love the voice input, but I basically can't use it because it doesn't output text that looks like I wrote it! This is because, in almost all contexts (with the notable and obvious exception of Github issues), I don't capitalize (most of) my words. Currently, FUTO Voice Input doesn't have any options at all to disable auto-capitalization, and this is very annoying.

Many people prefer to not capitalize certain parts of speech which are capitalized in "correct" (standard classroom) English, and FUTO Voice Input should be able to reflect this.

A basic option would be great, but a slightly more in-depth set of advanced capitalization options would be excellent. Here's what I have it mind:

• Automatically capitalize words (y/n) (in the normal input settings)
• Expanded options in the advanced input settings:
  • Capitalize first word of sentence (y/n)
  • Capitalize proper nouns (y/n)
  • Capitalize "I" and contractions of it ("I'm", "I've", etc.) (y/n)
  • Capitalize acronyms (y/n)
  • Capitalize first word of input (y/n) (some people seem to care about this in addition to whether or not the first word of each sentence is capitalized, so we may as well have the option)
  • Capitalize Every Word (y/n) (look, it looks weird to me too, but some people do it, and we may as well include the option. Good software doesn't unnecessarily restrict how people interact with it)

This should be relatively easy to implement with some simple post-processing, and should not require tinkering with the transcription model itself.

This ticket relates to #35 and #5.

[jonahbrawley]

I also would love these suggestions to be implemented, I constantly am removing the trailing period from short sentences (such as "I'm on my way.") since it seems unnatural.

There have been other issues suggesting this in the past, and I fail to see why it has been so debated in those threads. The OpenAI Whisper model is really great for voice recognition in this use case but types way too formally for me. If you want every one of your texts to have precise punctuation, nothing wrong with that and more power to you. I personally don't see any harm with this as an optional feature for those who do not.

[laundmo]

Wanted to add that these options to transform the output of the model would be great. Especially the periods at the end of a input are often wrong, as in realtime text chats, linguistically the fact the message is sent counts as the end of sentence marker, and adding a period is doubling up on this, often communicating annoyance or anger

Ideally, i'd love to be able to write my own fix-up rules using something like regex substitutions with maybe a extended syntax like sublime text uses where you can prefix the substitution with \L to lowercase it. But obviously this is quite a expert feature and just having a bunch of predefined toggles would already help a lot.

[SmokeyJFF]

I don't understand why you want to trash up a keyboard? If you want your text to look like you're uneducated use your thumbs. The rest of us don't type 3rd grader

[Hate9]

There is no "correct" form of writing: that's entirely cultural. In many cultures, including most of the English-speaking world, typing with entirely "correct" punctuation and capitalization is considered to be overly formal or even passive-aggressive, when done in an informal context such as texting.

Personally, I do all of my formal writing at a computer keyboard, so my only use-case for speech-to-text is in informal contexts where "correct" punctuation and capitalization is undesirable.

I could choose to point out and nitpick the grammatical errors in your message (which are common among people who make the sort of argument you're making), but I frankly don't consider that to be productive for this discussion. Making fun of someone won't actually change their mind or help them understand me better.

Language is about context, and there are many contexts in which one might wish to write less formally.

[jonahbrawley]

I don't understand why you want to trash up a keyboard? If you want your text to look like you're uneducated use your thumbs. The rest of us don't type 3rd grader

I don't understand how you don't understand my and other's explanation? Unless I'm texting my boss at work, I'm not using perfect punctuation. I don't need to drive home the fact that I have competent grammar to my friends in casual conversation.

Gonna paste again what @laundmo mentioned:

linguistically the fact the message is sent counts as the end of sentence marker, and adding a period is doubling up on this, often communicating annoyance or anger

[laundmo]

do note that i am strongly on the side of descriptive linguistics, not prescriptive. i'm not saying "this is how it works everywhere" or "this is how its correct" but instead what i'm saying is "studying how people use the language leads to this conclusion"

[SmokeyJFF]

There is no "correct" form of writing: that's entirely cultural. In many cultures, including most of the English-speaking world, typing with entirely "correct" punctuation and capitalization is considered to be overly formal or even passive-aggressive, when done in an informal context such as texting.

See, you're already showing your ignorance due to your lack of education and laziness. There IS a correct form of writing, and EVERY society with a language has these rules. Again, try educating yourself on proper English before you continue making yourself look more of a fool than you already are. Maybe you should attend a proper college level English class? Further, just because you think properly formatting text is "overly formal or even passive-aggressive" doesn't mean anyone else that's trying to understand your drivel does so stop with your straw man argument. Due to the above, the rest of your statement requires no further attention.

And the fact that you would want a programmer to waste their time to accommodate your laziness and lack of intellect shows what kind of individual you are. Of course, if you weren't so lazy and if your non problem was actually important to you, you'd quit wasting everyone's time and program it yourself.

[laundmo]

@SmokeyJFF

No matter what your opinion is, your way of communicating it is insulting, rude, and unhelpful. Insulting others gets you nowhere. Ad-hominem attacks constitute the least productive kind of arguments.

The languages we use are called up to fulfill various duties, which often require a different variation of the language. The example of the period at the end of text messages is just one example where this happened. Every society has language, but very few actually try (and basically always fail) to keep it static as you suggest we do. All language really needs to do is be a vessel for communication understood by both sides. In fact, what you call "drivel" and "uneducated" and "lack of intellect" and "lazy" is the entirely natural change in language which happens when a new need arises (such as communicating tone with just text). This is all quite accepted in linguistics.

Please read the following:
https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/873/study-punctuation-in-text-messages-helps-replace-cues-found-in-face-to-face
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563217306192

(And i would be happy to write the code for this, but having read the code for voiceinput, there should be a maintainer involved as it would likely require moving around quite a few things. Also, i'm not that confident with the programming languages used for this project.)