whisper-server is started on --inference-path /v1/audio/transcriptions,
which is exactly the path api.py already builds for the hosted providers,
and llama-server answers /chat/completions the way OpenRouter does. So the
local half is one more base URL rather than a second code path: worker.py,
filetranscribe.py and meeting.py are untouched, and dictation, subtitles
and meetings all work here on the first try.
Three findings worth naming, none of them in the new code:
whisper.cpp cuts segments on tokens, which in Turkish lands inside a word
about as often as between two. Pasted raw that gives "akraba değ\niller.";
in a subtitle it gives a cue reading "değ". Whisper marks the start of a
word with a leading space, so a piece that does not begin with one
continues the word above it.
A small model will repeat the transcript until the context is full, and
every one of those tokens is a second of somebody waiting: measured at 206
seconds, and 25 with a ceiling on the reply. Hosted models are left alone,
where the same runaway is rare and a ceiling would cut the minutes short.
A server outlives SIGTERM and SIGKILL holding its model in memory. Signals
are now turned into an event Qt delivers, since Qt blocks in C where a
Python handler never runs, and a pid file lets the next start sweep up
what a SIGKILL left behind.
The minutes keep their own provider rather than following cleanup's. The
two jobs are not the same size: a 4B model here will strip the filler words
out of a dictation and will not write up an hour long meeting.
The suite runs offline now: a test that reaches the network says so instead
of quietly going there.
Two programs, one treatment: ask GitHub what was released, take the build
this machine can run, check it against the sha256 the index published, then
fetch a model from Hugging Face the same way and keep one server up on a
port of its own.
Neither list is written into the source. A model catalogue in here means a
release of Dikte for every model somebody else publishes, and a pinned
version means one for every whisper.cpp release; both are somebody else's
news. The lists are read at the moment the settings window is opened and
cached for a few hours, and a cache that has gone stale still answers when
the network does not.
Nothing that lands on disk is trusted for having arrived, which matters
more here than usual because half of what is fetched is a program Dikte
then runs.
Left alone, parec buffers about two seconds and then hands the lot over at
once. Measured against the chunk the level meter reads:
parec, as it was longest gap 2005 ms
parec --latency-msec=64 longest gap 86 ms
pw-record longest gap 129 ms
On a machine that has parec, which is every PulseAudio one and every PipeWire
one with the compatibility service, the waveform stood still and then jumped,
looking like a microphone that was not picking anything up. The recording
itself was fine, but the tail of one can be lost that way too: stop() ends the
process, and whatever is still held back goes with it.
The number asked for is the meter's own chunk, which is the unit the rest of
this file is measured in.
The pump now says when the capture ended with nothing captured, which is worth
saying: parec refusing the device looks like silence otherwise. But stop() ends
it the same way, so a recording shorter than 0.3 s raised that alarm first and
"Recording too short" second, sending the user after a sound server that is
fine. It follows the flag MeetingRecorder already carries for this.
test_desktop_compat.py moves into the files for the modules it covers, so a
test is where the next person looking at that module will find it.
install_shortcut(), remove_shortcut(), shortcut_status() and desktop_name()
were added and nothing called them: the settings window and the command line
both still went straight to the KDE ones. On GNOME, pressing Install ran
kwriteconfig6, which is not there, and the three interface strings written for
this never appeared. README said the settings window installs a GNOME or KDE
shortcut, and it installed neither.
Both callers go through the chooser now, and the status line names whichever
desktop answered.
Which pair of tools a session uses was being asked inside copy(), read(),
copy_bytes() and press(), four times, in a conditional each. A third desktop
means a third branch in each of them, and macOS is already open as a pull
request doing exactly that in a different style.
Wayland and X11 are two entries at the top of the file now, each naming its
programs and how to build a key press from them. The functions below take
whichever entry the session gets. Adding a desktop is an entry and a line in
desktop(), and it touches nothing else.
Two things fall out of it. The key press is checked against the same table on
both: xdotool was being handed the shortcut as typed, so ctrl+f13 was refused
on Wayland and passed through on X11. And a missing tool names the package to
install again, which the shared message had dropped.
The tests say the promises once and run them against both desktops, so a third
one inherits the list rather than needing a copy of it.
570 tests over the standard library's unittest, so there is nothing to
install beyond the PyQt6 the application already needs. They reach neither
the network, the microphone, nor the real ~/.config/dikte: urllib is faked at
one function, the tools are faked at shutil.which, and every test is handed
its own config and data directory.
What they hold onto is what a change is most likely to move without meaning
to. The request each provider is sent, field by field. A settings window that
loads a value into a widget and writes it back, which is where a setting
added to one half and not the other is silently reset. The dictation chain
end to end: what is transcribed, what is pasted, what lands in the history,
and what happens to the audio afterwards. A config file written by an older
version. A meeting whose two channels heard the same sentence.
59 of them carry @linux_only, because they cover what Dikte is on this
desktop rather than what it does: PipeWire, wl-clipboard, ydotool, KDE's
shortcut file. The other 511 pass on any platform, and that line is worth
holding as the ports arrive.
CONTRIBUTING.md says how to run them, what support.py offers, and the three
things about this codebase that trip up a new test.
yusufipk