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YazSes v2.8.0-dev.1 — Wave L opens: non-speech & prosodic voice interaction (developer preview)

Pre-release · not published (publish workflows are pinned to v0.x/v1.x; v2 dev tags do not ship). v1.4.1 remains the stable release. Every feature is OFF by default.

Opens Wave L (design/vision/v2-research/14-wave-l.md) — a fresh state-of-the-art round that turns YazSes toward a genuinely new area: non-speech vocal signals (formant/pitch/loudness/breath) and acoustic prosody as first-class interaction channels — for users who can phonate but not articulate discrete words, and for word-free eyes-free control. Ten evidence-anchored features are designed; this drop ships the first two pure cores.

New in dev.1 (all off by default)

  • Vocal Joystick (ADR-v2-095, [vocaljoystick]) — continuous analog cursor/scroll control by sustaining vowels: "ahh" → right, "eee" → up, louder = faster, a sharp pitch-jump = click. No words. vowel_to_direction (formants → 8-way) + vocal_control_vector + a VocalJoystick integrator. A fundamentally new modality (velocity, not selection) for severe motor impairment (ALS, high SCI, CP). Anchor: Bilmes et al., The Vocal Joystick (ASSETS 2006).
  • Earcon Feedback Language (ADR-v2-096, [earcon]) — tiny structured tones signal daemon state eyes-free: a rising two-note motif for "recording started", a muted buzz for "low confidence", a chime for "command done" — faster and less intrusive than spoken read-back. earcon_for motif grammar + render_earcon numpy synth. Anchor: Brewster earcons (TOCHI 1993).

yazses features now lists 107 capabilities. (Vocal Joystick is experimental — features enable requires --force.)

Wave L remaining

Mouth-Sound Switch Access · Beam-Steered Spatial VAD · Breath-Paced Dictation · Whisper-Aware Mode · Hesitation-Hold Endpointing · Involuntary-Vocalization Auto-Excision · Pitch-Contour Vocal Gestures · Prosodic Auto-Punctuation.

Quality

1344 tests green across Linux × macOS × Windows on Python 3.11 and 3.12. Both new cores are unit-tested to 100% with no new dependency (the Vocal Joystick's formant/pitch tracker is an optional lazy extra; the pure mapping + integrator are dependency-free). The default install and the v1 dictation path are unchanged.