GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 632226
Dasher is hard to use to operate IRC clients such as irssi
Last modified: 2021-05-26 09:57:59 UTC
it is very hard to type something like /window 4<return> because there is no digit<return> in the training data
Created attachment 172433 [details] [review] adjustments to English training data for enhanced IRC use
Most users of English aren't using it for IRC, so to patch the English training text is wrong. However: 1) Surely the 2nd time you write /window 4, it is easier because dasher has now seen it before? 2) You have created a good training text which works for you, so dasher is nicely configurable :-) Comments?
There is loads of stuff in the training data, and using it on IRC is a perfectly valid use-case for the tool. Is there any reason *not* to have a larger training database that is more useful to more people from the outset? I should emphasize how very very hard it is to type a digit followed by a return with the default training data, which has more use cases than just IRC. Because the problem initially manifested itself with users not being able to change windows on IRC that was the motivation for the patch, I would be happy to do a similar patch for the other language files if that is appropriate, maybe just to allow digit<return> in each.
Perhaps if this was tagged as "papercut" it would be more obvious what it is (a usability issue that affects large percentage of users some of the time and for which a (small) patch has been provided and offered upstream).
Dasher is one of the accessibility tools distributed in Ubuntu. We guide users to use IRC for our official online support channel, training events, local community teams, the #ubuntu-accessibility team channel etc. so it is pretty important that the tools we use to communicate with each other are not unnecessarily hard to use with Dasher. We could do this as a patch inserted in the Debian or Ubuntu packaging, but I think this could be useful to people who acquire Dasher through other means. The actual problem this patch solves is the near impossibility of ending a line with a digit, which could have utility when entering numbers in spreadsheets, using programming languages, typing telephone numbers etc. etc.
Are there additional changes you would like to see to this patch?
Yes please: as I was trying to explain to you by email, I think what you want to define is "IRC English". This basically just means you writing an alphabet file which points at your preferred training text. (So, you supply an alphabet file, and its training text.)
So the user would have to select that they want to use IRC English in order to type a number followed by return? I am not trying to fill a file full of l337 speek or any of that nonsense people write in text messages or on twitter! I can see a case in all languages for typing a digit followed by return, I don't mind putting that in every language file. I am OK with dropping the other free software vocabulary I put in, just thought that might be useful for the typical user of Ubuntu who might use Dasher. I would rather it just works out of the box for our users, and I would rather not do it as an Ubuntu specific patch if I can help it. If it was done as a separate language file that would be basically a full duplication of the English file with the extra numbers, I don't think users would discover it easily and it wouldn't benefit users of other language files.
Patrick: does this mean we should supply "Spreadsheet English", "Spreadsheet French", "Spreadsheet Dutch", "Spreadsheet German" too? All that is wanted is a non-statistically unlikely way of typing the sequence [0-9]<cr>...
There are many other reasons one may want to be able to type a number<return> than just IRC. IRC happens to be the way I first noticed it, but certainly spreadsheets, documents, and programming are all use-cases where having this functionality easier to use would be good.
Patrick: it's been 3 months since the last comment here. Are you comfortable accepting this patch so that the users who are hit by this on a daily basis have easier lives?
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new enhancement request ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/dasher/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.