Experiments with speech to text

[Roedy Green]

I am experimenting with Dragon Naturally Speaking, a text to speech
device.

One of the frustrating but amusing things is that it only understands
the word "backspace" when I sound annoyed. It is training ME to snarl
at it.

It does much better with long phrases. It has a devil of a time with
individual letters.

We will see how it evolves after some training. I have seen demos
where the thing made not a single error even when we in the audience
made up the text.

Specialized speech to text might be very useful in programming since
the vocabulary is limited to the defined variables, methods and
keywords. In theory it should be much easier than general text
recognition, if you could train it on the definitions easily.


In contrast with typing, the longer the variable names are the more
accurate it becomes.

 

[VisionSet]

I am experimenting with Dragon Naturally Speaking, a text to speech
device.

One of the frustrating but amusing things is that it only understands
the word "backspace" when I sound annoyed. It is training ME to snarl
at it.

It does much better with long phrases. It has a devil of a time with
individual letters.

We will see how it evolves after some training. I have seen demos
where the thing made not a single error even when we in the audience
made up the text.

Specialized speech to text might be very useful in programming since
the vocabulary is limited to the defined variables, methods and
keywords. In theory it should be much easier than general text
recognition, if you could train it on the definitions easily.

Yes you can give it a custom dictionary and that puts its accuracy up many
fold. When trained on these eg java keywords it would be as near as damned
it 100% accurate.

Personally though, I need think time in front of code not type time, the
latter is negligible.

 

[Roedy Green]

Personally though, I need think time in front of code not type time, the
latter is negligible.

It is very quick at selecting. You just say select xxx and it finds
and highlights all in one operation.

I suspect with a suitable editor you could study code quickly by
asking it to find you bits of code rapidly.

I have noticed that it is quite sensitive to where you hold the
microphone. Others have told me you want a high quality headset where
you can control that precisely for best results. I am using a mobile
recorder plugged in directly.

It is unlike a person. If you slow down or enunciate more clearly, it
becomes even more baffled. You must be consistent with the breezy way
you spoke in training.

I think of the months I devoted to honing my keyboard skills and how
terrible I was to start out with each new tool. It is only fair to
give myself time to learn Dragon.

Yet I don't see a generic speech editor being much use for Java. I
would have to write a special one that took advantage of knowledge of
java syntax, and the limited vocabulary. The expensive software
package lets you create voice macros. I don't have that.

Dealing with caps has been the most frustrating thing. It can't seem
to understand me when I say the word "caps" used to capitalise the
next letter, and it gets worse from there by introducing all kinds of
stray words it thinks I meant when I say caps. Infuriatingly the
other word it has most trouble with is "backspace". But I am
certainly more productive with it than I was with a new keyboard.

You might also get it to read to you every once in a while for a break
from the tedium of reading documentation.

 

[VisionSet]

Dealing with caps has been the most frustrating thing. It can't seem
to understand me when I say the word "caps" used to capitalise the
next letter, and it gets worse from there by introducing all kinds of
stray words

There is a simple toggle (voice or keyboard) to move between command mode
(ie limited dictionary of gui commands) and literal mode.

 

[Roedy Green]

And this is not the first time you have used the Java groups as
an outlet for non-Java topics. But I wouldn't reply merely to
criticize you. I have a suggestion.

I contribute a lot to the comp.lang.java.* newsgroups. About the only
thing I ask in return is tolerance for my broad curiosity. That post
eventually gets to the Java point, about how speech to text technology
could affect the way we edit Java source code and what a speech
controlled Java editor would be like.

In an ideal world you would have chimed in with some information about
how you can make your Java apps speech-controlled. Someone else would
have talked about the pros and cons of voice-controlled editing based
on their experiences. Someone else would have pointed out the
importance of this gives the explosion of hand helds. Someone else
might have pointed out the approximate RAM/ROM threshhold needed for
decent text to speech, and made an estimate of when cellphones will
hit it. Someone else could say that Java needs a API for this, and
someone else could point out one already exists.

 

[Roedy Green]

Have you considered starting your own blog?

I did and nobody came.

 

[Dale King]

I contribute a lot to the comp.lang.java.* newsgroups. About the only
thing I ask in return is tolerance for my broad curiosity.

I think your posts questioning the death toll for 9/11 were a bit too far
off topic, but I meant for this to be a positive thread.

That post
eventually gets to the Java point, about how speech to text technology
could affect the way we edit Java source code and what a speech
controlled Java editor would be like.

In an ideal world you would have chimed in with some information about
how you can make your Java apps speech-controlled.

I did mention JSAPI.

Someone else would
have talked about the pros and cons of voice-controlled editing based
on their experiences. Someone else would have pointed out the
importance of this gives the explosion of hand helds. Someone else
might have pointed out the approximate RAM/ROM threshhold needed for
decent text to speech, and made an estimate of when cellphones will
hit it. Someone else could say that Java needs a API for this, and
someone else could point out one already exists.

Once again, my focus was not on criticizing you for off-topic posting, but
when I read this the thought occurred to me that Roedy should be writing his
own blog(s).

I did and nobody came.

There may be several reasons for that. For one it takes time for people to
find it. .Perhaps you did not advertise it very well. A line in your sig
pointing to it would probably do wonders given the posting you do here. Was
your blog software also sending update notifications to sites like
weblogs.com.

I was amazed with my measly little start at a blog that people managed to
stumble across it. I posted 3 messages and all I did was add a line to my
sig pointing to it and people came and commented on my entries (which were
related to Sony Clie).

I really suggest that you get MovableType and try it. I think you might be
surprised at the response you'll get if you give it some time.