I've been thinking of something which may make my job as a writer a little easier. The end result is I'd like to bring up Open Office/ Libre Office and dictate what I want into a microphone. This way I can concentrate more on the information and less on the typos.
There is some system software which will do this for the Mac (I'd prefer something for Linux) and there are some problems. Namely the small vocabulary and inaccuracy of recognition on some words (eg. Off --> On). There are a number of commercial products out there but being cheap I'd like something free.
A half hour under Google produced a couple of suggestions. Pocket Sphinx and Julius. Both were apparently a little tough to get running and had sparse documentation (at least as of last year). Both are available in the Mint/Ubuntu repositories.
Any comments?
Later Mike
Did you find anything suitable, Mike?
I am interested in speech recognition for the Mac. I think you answered my question about the system speech recognition (limited vocabulary). I am looking for something that could be used with software that I write, that would have to have a very large / expandable vocablulary. I don't want to have to cut and paste from another app (eg, microsoft word) to my app that I'm going to develope.
Ideally, I would be able to choose the vocabulary and have different vocablularies, depending on context.
-Dan
On 2011-02-09, at 11:00 PM, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
I've been thinking of something which may make my job as a writer a little easier. The end result is I'd like to bring up Open Office/ Libre Office and dictate what I want into a microphone. This way I can concentrate more on the information and less on the typos.
There is some system software which will do this for the Mac (I'd prefer something for Linux) and there are some problems. Namely the small vocabulary and inaccuracy of recognition on some words (eg. Off --> On). There are a number of commercial products out there but being cheap I'd like something free.
A half hour under Google produced a couple of suggestions. Pocket Sphinx and Julius. Both were apparently a little tough to get running and had sparse documentation (at least as of last year). Both are available in the Mint/Ubuntu repositories.
Any comments?
Later Mike
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Dan Martin GP Hospital Practitioner Computer Scientist ummar143@shaw.ca (204) 831-1746 answering machine always on
On 11-03-15 12:02 PM, Dan Martin wrote:
Did you find anything suitable, Mike?
There are some commercial products which appear to be acceptable for M$ and the Mac. Still having hardware problems with my Linux box (going to replace my boot drive this evening) so I haven't tried anything there.
I am interested in speech recognition for the Mac. I think you answered my question about the system speech recognition (limited vocabulary). I am looking for something that could be used with software that I write, that would have to have a very large / expandable vocablulary. I don't want to have to cut and paste from another app (eg, microsoft word) to my app that I'm going to develope.
The last time I tried the built in speech recognition was with 10.4. I haven't tried it with 10.6 yet. With 10.4 you could build up your own vocabulary one word at a time. As I mentioned, there is already a non-free vocabulary file as an expansion pack. With only a couple of GB free on my hard drive I can see where either solution would be a problem.
Also, since I've recently been told I have a slight French/German accent I am somewhat concerned about using an expansion pack.
Ideally, I would be able to choose the vocabulary and have different vocablularies, depending on context.
I can't speak for the commercial products. However, as I recall the built in software allows for only one vocabulary file. I gather it is just a simple speech to word translation without context sensitivity. It would be nice to have it be a little more intelligent. Specifically realising the difference between the up arrow and the word "up".
The last time I looked, the vocabulary file was a simple structure but a pain in the back-side if you wanted to add a lot of words. At first I was thinking about catting a dictionary into the file but I didn't have one handy and then thought it was a lot of work.
-Dan
Later Mike
On 2011-02-09, at 11:00 PM, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
I've been thinking of something which may make my job as a writer a little easier. The end result is I'd like to bring up Open Office/ Libre Office and dictate what I want into a microphone. This way I can concentrate more on the information and less on the typos.
There is some system software which will do this for the Mac (I'd prefer something for Linux) and there are some problems. Namely the small vocabulary and inaccuracy of recognition on some words (eg. Off --> On). There are a number of commercial products out there but being cheap I'd like something free.
A half hour under Google produced a couple of suggestions. Pocket Sphinx and Julius. Both were apparently a little tough to get running and had sparse documentation (at least as of last year). Both are available in the Mint/Ubuntu repositories.
Any comments?
Later Mike _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
Dan Martin GP Hospital Practitioner Computer Scientist ummar143@shaw.ca (204) 831-1746 answering machine always on
For what it's worth, here's David Pogue's review of Dragon Dictate for the Mac from last fall:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/finally-professional-dictation-sof...
I don't have any direct experience with it or any other speech recognition software for that matter. But in David Pogue's reviews, he claims nothing else comes close to Dragon's software for accuracy. Unfortunately, that would seem to include any free software, so if you're looking for something free/open-source, this won't be much help.
Gilles
On 15/03/2011 12:02 PM, Dan Martin wrote:
Did you find anything suitable, Mike?
I am interested in speech recognition for the Mac. I think you answered my question about the system speech recognition (limited vocabulary). I am looking for something that could be used with software that I write, that would have to have a very large / expandable vocablulary. I don't want to have to cut and paste from another app (eg, microsoft word) to my app that I'm going to develope.
Ideally, I would be able to choose the vocabulary and have different vocablularies, depending on context.
-Dan
On 2011-02-09, at 11:00 PM, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
I've been thinking of something which may make my job as a writer a little easier. The end result is I'd like to bring up Open Office/ Libre Office and dictate what I want into a microphone. This way I can concentrate more on the information and less on the typos.
There is some system software which will do this for the Mac (I'd prefer something for Linux) and there are some problems. Namely the small vocabulary and inaccuracy of recognition on some words (eg. Off --> On). There are a number of commercial products out there but being cheap I'd like something free.
A half hour under Google produced a couple of suggestions. Pocket Sphinx and Julius. Both were apparently a little tough to get running and had sparse documentation (at least as of last year). Both are available in the Mint/Ubuntu repositories.
Any comments?
Later Mike
Thanks Gilles. Nuance seems to be the biggest (perhaps only?) player. Pogue states that it "runs in the background" and translates speech "into typewritten text into any Mac program" which is exactly what I'm looking for.
The speech recognition app for iPad seems to require you to cut and paste - but an app could be designed with their SDK, which I stumbled upon: http://www.nuance.com/for-developers/dragon-mobile-sdk/index.htm
On 2011-03-15, at 2:28 PM, Gilles Detillieux wrote:
For what it's worth, here's David Pogue's review of Dragon Dictate for the Mac from last fall:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/finally-professional-dictation-sof...
I don't have any direct experience with it or any other speech recognition software for that matter. But in David Pogue's reviews, he claims nothing else comes close to Dragon's software for accuracy. Unfortunately, that would seem to include any free software, so if you're looking for something free/open-source, this won't be much help.
Gilles
On 15/03/2011 12:02 PM, Dan Martin wrote:
Did you find anything suitable, Mike?
I am interested in speech recognition for the Mac. I think you answered my question about the system speech recognition (limited vocabulary). I am looking for something that could be used with software that I write, that would have to have a very large / expandable vocablulary. I don't want to have to cut and paste from another app (eg, microsoft word) to my app that I'm going to develope.
Ideally, I would be able to choose the vocabulary and have different vocablularies, depending on context.
-Dan
On 2011-02-09, at 11:00 PM, Mike Pfaiffer wrote:
I've been thinking of something which may make my job as a writer a little easier. The end result is I'd like to bring up Open Office/ Libre Office and dictate what I want into a microphone. This way I can concentrate more on the information and less on the typos.
There is some system software which will do this for the Mac (I'd prefer something for Linux) and there are some problems. Namely the small vocabulary and inaccuracy of recognition on some words (eg. Off --> On). There are a number of commercial products out there but being cheap I'd like something free.
A half hour under Google produced a couple of suggestions. Pocket Sphinx and Julius. Both were apparently a little tough to get running and had sparse documentation (at least as of last year). Both are available in the Mint/Ubuntu repositories.
Any comments?
Later Mike-- Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: grdetil@scrc.umanitoba.ca Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/ Dept. Physiology, U. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 0J9 (Canada) _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
Dan Martin GP Hospital Practitioner Computer Scientist ummar143@shaw.ca (204) 831-1746 answering machine always on
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Dan Martin -
Gilles Detillieux -
Mike Pfaiffer