Guide·07 of 10·Part of Speak
What you say
Dictation into any field, editing from the keys, and the dozen moves the draft uses.
01·The first minute
01link
Dictate into any field
lode.The draft opens at the foot of the screen and the words appear as you say them. Type into the same sentence. Return puts it where your cursor was. Recognition runs on your Mac.
MailHi Dana,
draftnormal⏎ paste · esc closeA reply to write
02·When you are ready
02link
Revise what a field already holds
lode⇧.The field's text, or its selection, is pulled into the draft, silent. Revise it from the keys, and return puts it back exactly where it was.
NotesMeeting moved to Thursday, bring the budget.
draftnormalMeeting moved to Thursday, bring the budget.
⏎ put it back · esc closeA sentence already in the field
03link
Fix a word without leaving the keys
escFbcwesc makes the draft an editor. F and a letter jumps back to that letter, with every letter you can reach lit. c w changes the word under the cursor. Type the right one, and return.
Esc, then F, then b, then c, then w
04Few know thislink
The dozen moves
The draft's editor is vim, and a draft needs about a dozen of its moves. Each is a verb, or a verb and an object.
- h j k l
- Move by a character, and by the lines you see.
- w · b
- Forward and back by a word.
- f x · F x
- To the next or the previous x. Every letter you can reach lights while the move is pending.
- t x · T x
- To just before it.
- c motion
- Change what the motion covers, then type. cw changes the word.
- d motion
- Delete it. dw, d$ to the end of the line.
- y motion · p
- Copy it, and paste. The only two keys that touch the system clipboard.
- iw · aw
- The word under the cursor, without or with the space beside it.
- q · b
- Any quoted thing, any bracketed thing. ciq changes what is inside the quotes.
- ]s · [s
- To the next or the previous editor mark.
- z= · zg
- Take the mark's fix, or keep the word as written.
- u
- Undo.
- .
- Repeat the last change.
- ⏎ · ⇧⏎
- Commit from any mode. Shift return is a new line.
05Few know thislink
Wrap and unwrap
sasdsrsa wraps a motion or selection in a pair, sd removes one, sr swaps one for another. An opening character pads with spaces.
Sa, then sd, then sr
06link
Teach it a name
Names and terms speech gets wrong go in one config line, and a settled result within an edit of a listed word is corrected to it.
03·The fine print
What nobody finds by pressing keys
- j and k walk the lines the eye sees, not logical lines, because draft prose makes a logical line an accident of width.
- Only y and p touch the system clipboard, so the strip holds what you meant to keep and nothing else.
- esc clears a pending command first, leaves a selection second, and only then closes. esc twice keeps the draft in the clipboard.
- The block cursor is a solid plate with the glyph cut out of it, in the system's mono face, so a lit letter never reflows the line.
- The microphone is chosen by its name in Sound settings. A headset that goes silent is retried; the built-in microphone is the safe choice.
04·Why
Why it works this way
There is one grammar and no picker. The floor is the plain text field everyone knows, and the editor exists only past an esc a person need never press. It is vim, stock, with two imports from the author's own editor for finding the pair you mean, because one key that finds the quote you meant beats three that ask you to name it.
05·Settings
The settings behind this page
Read from the schema Lodestar itself emits. The settings window shows the same rows, and each wears the path it writes.
gestures.draftbooleanlode . speak into the draft, ⇧. revise the field in it
$ lodestar config set gestures.draft truedraft.inputstringThe microphone the draft listens to, by its name in Sound settings. Empty follows the system default input.
$ lodestar config set draft.input …draft.wordsobjectWord → true. Names and terms speech gets wrong; a settled result within a letter or two of one is repaired to it, case and all.
$ lodestar config set draft.words …