Per Slack discussion with aegis, talon.ui.mac shouldn't imported from it all, we should import use the platform independent version instead.

Specifically, the mac package fails to raise ImportError properly:

2022-04-04 15:04:10 ERROR user.talon_axkit.dictation.dictation_context (C:\Users\nriley\AppData\Roaming\talon\user\talon_axkit\dictation\dictation_context.py) import failed
   15:                                    threading.py:930* # loader thread
   14:                                    threading.py:973*
   13:                                    threading.py:910*
   12:                         app\resources\loader.py:887|
   11:                         app\resources\loader.py:823|
   10:                         app\resources\loader.py:641|
    9:                         app\resources\loader.py:677|
    8:                         app\resources\loader.py:731|
    7:                         app\resources\loader.py:427| # [stack splice]
    6:                           importlib\__init__.py:127|
    5:                         app\resources\loader.py:248|
    4:                         app\resources\loader.py:243|
    3: user\talon_axkit\dictation\dictation_context.py:9  | from talon.mac.ui import Element
    2:                         app\resources\loader.py:361|
    1:                                 talon\mac\ui.py:29 |
AttributeError: 'Library' object has no attribute 'tl_mac_has_separate_spaces'

Similar to https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/pull/947, let's use talonfmt, although I prefer a slightly longer maximum line length.

Note that one change to notification.talon is working around a parser issue: https://github.com/wenkokke/talonfmt/issues/17

Context: https://talonvoice.slack.com/archives/G8J6HDR6C/p1658803696161089

Grabbing the current element can raise an exception if it doesn't exist, so we should probably test the setting first.

No rush on reviewing this! I figured it would be good to get your thoughts on this first batch of changes, before I go on to push more stuff. I'm probably going to focus on cursorless-on-JetBrains for the rest of the weekend so I'm not blocked on this review.

In this change:

• using AX to acquire context for dictation formatters
• APIs for overriding in specific apps, a sample override for Messages.app
• the ability to automatically enable AX for Electron
• basic debugging of accessibility using hissing

My thought is the experimental branch can be a sort of middle ground between main and our feature branches. Ambitious beta testers could use it and it also gives us a place to merge our development changes together and test them together. We can promote it to main afterwards.

updates:

• github.com/Zac-HD/shed: 0.10.3 → 0.10.5
• github.com/pre-commit/mirrors-prettier: v3.0.0-alpha.0 → v3.0.0-alpha.1
• github.com/Lucas-C/pre-commit-hooks: v1.3.0 → v1.3.1
• github.com/wenkokke/talonfmt: 1.8.0 → 1.7.4

Fixes:

• Support for negative numbers https://github.com/wenkokke/talonfmt/issues/17
• Support for settings with preceding underscores https://github.com/wenkokke/talonfmt/issues/16
• Support for key bindings https://github.com/wenkokke/talonfmt/issues/8

Taking a good suggestion from https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/issues/666, let's set up shed to reformat our code in an opinionated fashion. It also sorts imports and removes unused imports, which was my main motivation. :)

This doesn't set up any enforcement yet -- I need to learn more about how to use GitHub Actions (will do that later). For now, let's just make sure we run pre-commit run at some point during development, or use pre-commit install to install the commit hook.

Also if we forget I'll just reformat and pushed directly to main/experimental, it's not a big deal. Just want to get alignment on the actual style.

This just adds the config to reduce merge conflicts between the two branches -- to see what it looks like in action, see https://github.com/phillco/talon_axkit/pull/11.

updates:

• github.com/Zac-HD/shed: 0.10.3 → 0.10.5
• github.com/pre-commit/mirrors-prettier: v3.0.0-alpha.0 → v3.0.0-alpha.2
• github.com/Lucas-C/pre-commit-hooks: v1.3.0 → v1.3.1
• github.com/wenkokke/talonfmt: 1.8.0 → 1.8.1

Clobber was removed in https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/pull/915, so without this change axkit this throws a type error after merging past that knausj version:

talon.scripting.types.ActionImplError: Function 'user.dictation_peek_left' incompatible with prototype 'user.dictation_peek_left'
  Signature: (clobber=False)
  Expected:  () -> Optional[str]
  - Parameter count mismatch. Found 1, expected 0

Note that I think this means that users must merge this axkit commit and that knausj commit at the same time.

Flynt converts older versions of string interpolation to f-strings.

Since we plan to also use it in knausj, let's add it here too for beta testing. Although we don't have any old-style strings to fix up, so there were no changes applied.

I also ran pre-commit autoupdate which upgraded https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks.

One last reformatter. This adds prettier which supports a wide variety of languages.

Here, we'll use it for our Markdown and YAML files (hence the large diff, since it reformats pre-commit-config.yaml itself.)

updates:

• github.com/Zac-HD/shed: 0.10.7 → 0.10.8
• github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks: v4.3.0 → v4.4.0
• https://github.com/ikamensh/flynt/: 0.76 → 0.77

Mike on Slack:

I think I may have found a bug in axkit. I earlier reported that dictation mode wasn't replacing text correctly. It seems to be related to axkit. If I install axkit and then issue the following voice commands in dictation mode in TextEdit (on MacOS):

1. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
2. navigate up select phrase brown 3 orange

I always get:

The quick orange fox jumps over the lazy dog

Note the extra space before the word "orange".

However, if I remove axkit, restart Talon, and execute the same commands, I don't get the extra space. I can also see that something different is happening when Talon replaces the text without axkit. The cursor moves around in a different way depending on whether axkit is installed or not.

This allows you to quickly make edits in the current input buffer, by saying "resume with".

resume with <existing phrase in buffer> <new replacement>

Example

https://youtu.be/aU_B4KMl-DM?t=28

The person dictates My favorite dinner is squid vomit soup then says resume with dinner is chicken cacciatore to end up with the final sentence of My favorite dinner is chicken cacciatore.

MacOS includes an app called the Accessibility Inspector, which we frequently use during development:

The most useful feature is that you can click the "crosshair" button and then hover over a certain element in a different app to see its attributes.

While the inspector is nice, it has a few weaknesses:

• Limited voice control -- it has a couple of keyboard shortcuts but that's it
• Squats on the alt-space shortcut while running (makes it harder to quickly use).
• Similarly, if an element is selected it draws a persistent green box around it. Normally this is fine but it makes for observing things long term annoying
• After using the inspector, you frequently will want to iterate on what you've just inspected using the Talon REPL, but this requires context switch + manually copying information. A first party Talon integration could allow for faster switching.

Thanks to the new ui.element_at() recently added to talon by aegis, we could build a replacement using Canvas. It could serve as a semitransparent sidebar that could be dragged anywhere and toggled on/off as necessary. It could also draw borders around the focused element and/or elements under the mouse.

At least in some cases you can explicitly request a range, e.g.:

>>> o.focused_element.children.find_one(AXRole='AXTextArea').AXStringForRange[Span(0, 10)]
'\n\nNicholas'

This may be more efficient with long documents.