Good comments, Paulo.
I had serious hand and wrist problems years ago. I moved to supporting
my arms on the table and going to a touch pad. Many of my problems were
solved. I then moved to working on my neck and back problems by standing
and speaking to capture my audio.
I then reviewed my audio and took notes of coding that mattered. I
separated thinking from typing at the same time. The result has been
increased physical health and increased typing productivity.
Your mileage may vary.
Kindly,
*Stephen Dawson, DSL*
/Executive Strategy Consultant/
Business & Technology
+1 (865) 804-3454
http://www.shdawson.com
On 2/4/26 15:49, Paulo Barata wrote:
Dear Mr. Wagman,
About 10 years ago I experienced some real difficulties with my hands.
At that time, I tried to use my computer, including coding, by means
of voice commands, but it didn't work well for me. It is possible that
voice-control software have improved since that time, I cannot know.
My computer runs on Windows, not on Linux, so I am not sure whether
the following suggestions would work on Linux.
Years ago, there were two resources that helped me quite a lot to
decrease the use of my hands:
1. I found that the single most aggressive movement to my hands was
the mouse click. So, I started to use the mouse only for positioning
the cursor on the screen, but the "click" was performed by means of a
foot switch (a pedal). This, below, is the one that I have used for
many years, USA made, really sturdy, advertised as Windows and Mac OS
compatible, sold in USB versions with either 1, 2 or 3 pedals, each
pedal can be programmed to act as we wish:
[At the manufacturer] Savant Elite2 Dual Pedal
https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/savant-elite2-dual-pedal/
[At Amazon] Kinesis Savant Elite2 Programmable USB Foot Switch with 1,
2 or 3 Pedals
https://www.amazon.com/Kinesis-Savant-Elite2-Programmable-FP20A/dp/B00QYRTTHI
2. To write, I have used (much less now, but very often at the peak of
my hand impairment) the software Dasher, a tree-like way of writing
any character on the screen, whether letters, numbers or punctuation
characters. This was originally developed by Prof. David MacKay at
Cambridge University in the UK, and is a free software. It has a
learning curve, but it does work. It allows us to write without any
mouse click, just by continuously positioning the cursor on the screen.
The last working version of Dasher is Dasher 5.0 beta, at the address
below (on that page, it is said that Linux users must compile from
source code):
https://github.com/dasher-project/dasher/releases
A version 6 of Dasher seems to be under development, but I think it
actually has not been released yet.
On YouTube, you can get a feeling about how Dasher works. The first
video is a one-hour-long 2007 Google Tech Talk by Prof. MacKay
himself, explaining the concepts behind Dasher. The other two videos
are well shorter, just demonstrations of the software.
Dasher: information-efficient text entry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie9Se7FneXE
Ada Majorek Introduction - CSUN Dasher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvsSrClBwPM
Dasher alternative input software - review and how to use
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z7fr4pZhmQ
Please note:
(1) At least on Windows, Dasher can send its output (the written text)
directly to any other active window, so you could write directly to
your text editor, word processor or web browser.
(2) You will notice in the videos that, as the writing progresses,
whole words appear on the Dasher screen, which can very much
facilitate the writing of text. Dasher uses a background file of saved
text (anything, like pieces of newspaper news, etc.), and we can add
our own "dictionaries" to that backgroud file, anything we wish,
anything that seems to be frequently used, like our own name or home
address. In my case, I have added to that background file the most
common R functions, a lot of them, like log, sqrt, data.frame,
read.table, glm, and so on, and also functions used by some R
packages, and other pieces of R code frequently used; this really
makes it easier the writing of some R code.
(3) Dasher allows one to write in many different languages, not only
English, as there exist background files (each with the proper
"dictionary") in really many languages. In the Dasher settings, we can
define which will be the background file of our choice.
I hope this will be of interest to you.
Best regards,
Paulo Barata
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2026 15:14:50 -0800
From: Barnet Wagman<[email protected]>
To:[email protected]
Subject: [R] Voice coding R?
Message-ID:<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
Is anyone using voice coding to work with R? I need to give my hands a
rest and would like to hear anyone's experience.
I'm currently using Rstudio but could change IDE if necessary. I'd
strongly prefer tools that work under Linux.
More specifically, Serenade seems like a possible solution. It does not
support Rstudio directly but does support VS Code, which is supposed to
support R.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
______________________________________________
[email protected] mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide
https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
______________________________________________
[email protected] mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide https://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
