Re: debugging problems with speech recognition

Martin Sevior wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> In AbiWord shift-left selects a single character to the left of the caret.
>
> Control-Shift-Left arrow selects the word to the left of the caret.
>
> Is there some way Naturally Speaking can be programmed to emit
> contrl-shift-left on "scratch that"

no. Nuance locks things down pretty hard. The license agreement even forbids you
from adding any third-party add-on which gives the cheaper version the same
capabilities as a more expensive version. The market could really use
competition. Problem being that there aren't enough customers to fund the
massive amount of research and software development necessary to support two
companies. About 10 years ago give or take IBM and Dragon Systems went
head-to-head and moved from a reseller model to a direct sales model in computer
stores. Revenue dropped like a stone, resources for development vanished, IBM
off the market, and we almost lost Dragon Systems. Then people got greedy and
Dragon was sold, went through bankruptcy, and then sold again to the company now
known as nuance.

And before you ask, an open-source version of NaturallySpeaking would cost tens
of millions of dollars and decades of work not to mention numerous patent
lawsuits. I figure I have only 15 or 20 years worth of work life left before my
disability robs me of most computer use (sans speech recognition). I don't have
time to wait on many things and I certainly have no time to wait on OSS speech
recognition. end result is that I have to put up with what nuance will deliver,
what changes I can advocate for, and it's damn frustrating. one of the things
that significantly improve my quality of life is editors I can use with speech
recognition. Nuance only supports Microsoft Word and maybe Corel WordPerfect but
from what I hear, support should be put in between air quotes. I'd like to see
something solid but that's a whole different discussion.

And yes, one side effect of speech recognition uses that you tend to talk a lot.
  :-)
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Received on Sun Nov 29 21:53:52 2009