Dasher: information-efficient text entry

What Hacker News said

Strong rec DonHopkins · 2018-05 · on “Pie Menus: A 30-Year Retrospective: Take a Look and Feel Free”

Dasher is fantastic, because it's based on rock solid information theory, designed by the late David MacKay. Here is the seminal Google Tech Talk about it: [this video] Here is a demo of using Dasher by an engineer at Google, Ada Majorek, who has ALS and uses Dasher and a Headmouse to program: [LINK] Another one of her demonstrating Dasher: Ada Majorek Introduction - CSUN Dasher [LINK] Here’s a more recent presentation about it, that tells all about the latest open source release of Dasher 5: Dasher - CSUN 2016 - Ada Majorek and Raquel Romano [LINK] Here's the github repo: Dasher Version 4.11 [LINK] >Dasher is a zooming predictive text entry system, designed for situations where keyboard input is

Strong rec DonHopkins · 2023-11 · on “AI is currently just glorified compression”

I love David MacKay's brilliant work on the Dasher text input system, which draws deeply from his work on information theory -- imagine Dasher integrated with an IDE and code search and Copilot and language model! "Writing is navigating in the library of all possible books." -David MacKay We just allocate more shelf space to the more probably letters. [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] DonHopkins on May 18, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Pie Menus: A 30-Year Retrospective: Take a Look an... Dasher is fantastic, because it's based on rock solid information theory, designed by the late David MacKay. Here is the seminal Google Tech Talk about it: [this video] Here is a demo of using Dasher by an enginee

Recommends devilsenigma · 2016-12 · on “Dasher: Writing text really fast without typing or speaking”

This is really awesome. It looks hard, but it isn't. Here's a talk from 2007 that explains it well [this video]

Recommends DonHopkins · 2025-06 · on “Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing”

[LINK] DonHopkins on Nov 24, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: AI is currently just glorified compression I love David MacKay's brilliant work on the Dasher text input system, which draws deeply from his work on information theory -- imagine Dasher integrated with an IDE and code search and Copilot and language model! "Writing is navigating in the library of all possible books." -David MacKay We just allocate more shelf space to the more probable letters. Why isn't Dasher built into every operating system and mobile phone? [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] DonHopkins on May 18, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Pie Menus: A 30-Year Retrospective: Take a Look an... Dasher is fantastic, becau

Cites devilsenigma · 2016-12 · on “Dasher: Writing text really fast without typing or speaking”

People seem to pick up Dasher pick up pretty quickly [LINK] and the demo makes it seem much easier than it is [this video]

Cites DonHopkins · 2021-05 · on “Neural implant lets paralyzed person type by imagining writing”

I'd love a neural interface to Dasher, which adaptively learns as you use it which letter combinations are the most popular, and adjusts over time to make it easier and faster to input common text. It would be wonderful integrated with a context and language sensitive IDE. [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] >To make the interface efficient, we use the predictions of a language model to determine how much of the world is devoted to each piece of text. Probable pieces of text are given more space, so they are quick and easy to select. Improbable pieces of text (for example, text with spelling mistakes) are given less space, so they are harder to write. The language model learns all the time: if you use a no

Cites tosh · 2021-08 · on “Dasher: Information-efficient text entry (2007) [video]”

minute 32: breathing as one-dimensional input method (!): [this video] current version of Dasher in the browser: [LINK]