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IBM, TrollTech Integrate Linux Voice Recognition
Paladin128 writes: "Talk about cool technology. Linux may get widespread voice recognition before Windows, as this article mentions that IBM's ViaVoice will be bundled with Qt, and allow the programmers to use BNF to create parsing rules, and bid voice input directly to Qt components via Qt signals and slots. This level of integration evidently wasn't possible with Win32, thus there were performance issues. And since Qt is open source, the GNOME people could easilly find a way to integrate this technology into GTK+. Between adding voice to the handicapped accessability list, offering KDE in more languages than Windows is available in (I don't use GNOME so I can't comment on how it's doing here), and more customization than Windows can ever hope to offer (such as choice of desktops), Linux could really make some waves this year." Just don't mention "rm -rf" when you're near the microphone ...
Let's see, which QT event should I bind *sneeze* to?
Reality checks:
- it's going to take just a few more CPU cycles you have, no matter how many you have
- it's going to take ages to get translated to all these fancy little European languages
- it's going to take longer to tweak up to usability than all those Eterm background pictures
- it's still slower than typing.
Embedded devices, yeah, but they don't have the muscle. And nobody wants to spend hours to teach their coffee machines or garage doors to listen.
We have each other to misunderstand ourselves, the machines don't really care anyway.
Anyway, where's the tarball? This is going to be soo fun. I'll just have to clean up my place so I can convince someone to come over and witness my geeky coolness once it's running...
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Scene:-Computer Lab Student: Excuse me, but what is the command for deleting a directory and all its subtrees? Lab Technician: rm -rf Student: Are you sure? Lab Technician: Yes On a serious note, as voice enabled computer technology becomes more common, what standards are there to enable us to seperate computer commands from normal conversation? Do we have to be like ST and prefix everyhting with "computer", or are there more intelligent ways?
I'm a piano player, and a touch typing coder (~100-105wpm).
I can piano-play a hell of a lot faster than I can type.
How? Simple. PRACTICE! Yes, piano players practice the same piece over and over again when it is of said difficulty. Once you've practiced it enough, it is really easy to play it fast, because your motor memory kicks in.. it really just feels like your hands know where to go, and your brain decides how fast they do it.
Typists (useful ones, anyhow), tend to type different things every day -- this means that motor memory for a particular passage will never, never kick in. When it does (passwords, etc), you can expect 300+ wpm (bursts) from the "average coder".
Oh, and show me the "average piano player" (remember, we were talking about the "average coder") who can sight-read (no motor memory!) a piece at 220 in 4/4 that is solid 16th notes, with two-octave jumps in the right hand, and I'll eat my hat.
I still have a hard time believing that the "average coder" types 170wpm. I'm a pretty friggin' good coder, and I know how to type -- been doing it for over 15 years -- and 100 wpm seems to be several standard deviations above the mean.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Restaurants have this system call Squirrel that lets them input orders and it maintains the bills. Two of the common complaints with the touch screen interface is that the servers, who use the system, find it unintuative, and often have their hands full. This sounds like you can make a system where they just have to say "Table 13, burger with fries, philly steak no onions, 2 cokes", and it would do alright. Servers tend to have their own lingo for the meals they serve, and the system could understand them, in list format, with the exceptions. You wouldn't expect the populous to deal with such a system, but a server would pick it up quickly, and they could do it while clearing away dishes.
-no broken link
No, you don't. That's why you should be using a real keyboard, like the Sun Microsystems Type 5c, which has the control key beside the A key, and the escape beside the one.
And wrt emacs baiting: I guess you guys aren't smart enough to use meta-x global-set-key, huh?
And no, you don't have to move your fingers off the home row to use the meta on a real keyboard, either -- that's what the escape key is for.
Yeesh.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
First, I was wrong about the standard keyboard. She only used Dvorak.
Second is this quote: "In 1938...Blackburn first laid hands on a Dvorak keyboard. In only a few years her speed was up to 138 words per minute."
In 1938 this keyboard was clearly mechanical, thus 138 is a mechanical speed. From context it sounds like she never switched to electric so 150/170 are also mechanical speeds.
As for your claim: "A good mechanical typrwriter is a match for a good keyboard."
Have you ever even used a mechanical typewriter? FULLY mechanical? As in it doesn't plug into the wall at all? You are probably thinking of "mechanical" electric keyboards (i.e. dedicated typewriters not attached to a computer, but nonetheless electrically powered). REAL mechanical typewriters are VERY hard to type with.
An electric only requires you to close a relay and then the machine does the work of striking the paper. A mechanical requires you to impart enough force to strike the arm against the paper (a distance of several inches) AND lift the ribbon (and if you are shifting, you have to lift the weight of the carriage with your other pinky). The difference is incredible. I remember as a child trying to learn to type with my mother's mechanical typewriter. I had to quit because I couldn't press the keys hard enough. When I played with an electric in the store I was astounded at the tiny amount of force I needed to use to make the keys go. Also keep in mind that a mechanical requires you to wait for the arms to move out of the way (can also be a problem on the electric, but the distance is smaller) but a computer keyboard has no problem with that.
Conclusion: You made a foolish initial statement that you can no longer sustain.
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
I would have followed this statment with "there are no computer languages and programming tools that are designed with voice recognition in mind". As VR becomes more commonplace, I'm sure we will see better tools and languages that will take full advantage of all this. Also, if you have VR, your code will change. You will no longer have "int c" but "int count" and other longer, more descriptive names (that I try to do, but int c just comes out).
-no broken link
My next step was to go wireless, but if I can go two way wireless even better!
--
Anyone who has tried to figgure out what I'm saying on /. can't wait for me to get VR. My spelling is horrid at best, VR solves that problem. Who knows, I might even have a point worth reading once in a while - I've been moderated up a couple times anyway.
Spelling has always been my weak point. I like to think that I have good ideas despite that weakness. VR would solve the spelling and fat fingers problem.
...does this new code integration mean that Debian will have to move KDE into non-free again? I never see the licence issues with this discussed (this stuff was announced before). ViaVioce is not Free Software. So, how do they plan to solve this?
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Yes, VR is overrated... unless you don't have any hands. Or even if you've only got one hand. Or if you've got arthritis. And so on.
It's true that VR is not much use for able-bodied coders, but it is useful for able-bodied letter writers who don't type so fast.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Voice *recognition* would be great for replacing the mouse as a selector tool. A lot of people only use the mouse to select menu items or highlight windows to accept input. It sure would be nice to not have to take my hands off the keyboard to do some of these things.
*type type type*
Bold on
*type type type*
Mail window
*check mail*
Read....Reply
*type type type*
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MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
I actually find it useful for two conditions - when I'm tired and when I've had a few drinks. Which isn't to imply I'm a drunk or anything :)
Seriously, I find my typing goes noticeably downhill and becomes a serious effort under those conditions, but the dictation (Dragon NaturallySpeaking, FWIW) still works fine. If I need to send an e-mail or something, it's just easier.
It's not something I use most of the time but it's something I'm very glad to have around.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I can give one fabulous example - AutoCAD - that uses modifiable mouse pads. You've got a central drawing area on your tablet, and then you've got a huge number of areas outside this, where you can stick functions, and assorted pre-drawn pieces. This 'template' area can be changed at will.
Another (lesser) example is the good old MVS system. Your function keys vary depending where you are. Kinda nice, really, although I tend to drastically reprogram mine. Thus PF20 (Same as PF8, Page Down, by default) gets reprogrammed as 'Next' for one app (SDSF), 'Find not'blank' 8' in Edit (goes to next paragraph) and so on.
....Score: -1 (TrollTech)
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Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Sorry to bother you with this but how the Hell do you focus on a given widget with a voice recognition system ?
Do you just say "<TAB>" ?
I don't really like it.
If I type quicker than I speak and I want to replace my mouse with voice recognition, which is IMHO the only interesting way to exploit it, then I might want to focus on a different text zone using my voice but then, I might have problem deciding which word to connect to which action, isn't it?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
I've known people with 100+ wpm skills. Isaac Asimov claimed to type faster than he could talk and said this was about 100 wpm. And when I took typing in HS (for which I got a D, btw) our teacher (who was more excited about typing then I am about sex) went on and on about some championship she attended where the winner achieved 200+ wpm.
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MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
As i saw, there are a lots of comments on now useless is speech recognition for coders. Of course it is. Voice recognition is made for secretaries, writers, housewifes and handicap persons, not for coders. Of course it wount interpret your speech in comand line (imagine yourself in someones eyes dicating vi commands). Idea is ti make computers easy to use for non-computer literate persons.
I'm dislexic. Not just a little either. Had to ride the short bus the school for six years. I have an extremely hard time spelling anything right. Spell checkers that don't have the correct spelling for me are worthless (thanks aspell!)
I don't find Unix names all that hard. They are short. Easy to memorize. I don't have trouble with three letter words. I do when we hit five.
So don't you go changing /etc to some damn thing I can't spell
worth a damn in my name!
For example, use the Star Trek test. They've got very powerful computers (nevermind that they can be infected with weird space-borne contaigons), but what do they use voice controls for? Asking questions, controlling their environment, etc. When they need to program a new subroutine for the deflector dish, though, they use the keyboard.
Which brings up another question: Has anyone done any serious investigation into context-modifiable keyboards? My understanding on Star Trek is that their keyboards change their layouts depending on who's there, and what they're doing. I've always thought something like that would be fantastic, say, for switching into Quake or a flight sim -- make your keyboard LOOK like a control panel, so you don't have to remember that "." is strafe or whatever...
As for voice control, I'd really like to be able to control house systems (see my ÜberTiVo posting under the Set Top Box thread). To say "Play 1812" and have the system start playing it for me. Or "Where's my dinner?" and have the computer tell me to cook it myself (hey, gotta be realistic here). Or to just start rambling on, stream-of-conciousness, in a rant or rave about what's really annoying or cool, so I can edit it down to a letter later. That is what I think we need, and it's more on the application side than on the OS side.
Of course, we may already have good solutions for this, I just haven't been able to play with them yet... :(
let me clarify on my previous statement - to the bozos who were alarmed by my posting:
I didn't want their creepy fingers prying into my files - allow me to add that these were my own personal files, and copies of remote CVS repositories. I destroyed nothing that was of any value to the employer, they were going to wipe the drive and install NT anyways.
- passion
Replace all just replaces all occurrences. It assumes that you meant to do what you're doing.
...}
I only use R/A when I'm doing large regexp replaces. That happens often enough, though, that I learned the keyboard shortcuts to do it quickly. (Why, you ask, would any programmer do that, seeing as how it's rather dangerous? The particular piece of code I was working on when I learned the trick contained a number of rather large tables of the form
{Name, CONST_, "Name", ,
where it was easy to create a list of the Name fields. That's the kind of thing that old vi-warriors know calls for regexp replace all.)
everyone here is knocking voice recognition as useless. Well, I'm here to say that it is not.
I used OS/2. Version 4 came with a version of voice recognition, and I ran it on a 100MHz Pentium with only 32Meg RAM. It ruled in the proper place.
First, the system is good for first drafts of text documents like long reports. Don't expect to get a perfect copy the first time through. The output from the voice input will require some cleanup. But guess what, so does anything I type.
Very few people type anything close to 80wpm. I only get around 40. Voice type allowed around 100wpm. For those l337 haX0rz that can type and think that everyone should be able to...go out and see the sun every now and then!!
I would write up my report in note form, basically just outlining what I wanted to say. Anything that I had to quote got a reference to the text I would quote from. Then I locked the bedroom door to keep out noise from wife and kids, gathered my notes and references around and started talking. An hour later I had the first draft of a ten page report. I've spent 4 doing it manually.
You may not have a need for it, but if you're in school or any other place where you have to produce long reports and you don't type with flaming fingers, then voice input can be a real boost to productivity.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'd keep a copy of Qt around if this happens. I just hope it runs on FreeBSD, I'm not going back to linux just so I can talk to my workstation.
Now I will need to design a Qt-based WM which supports dual-focus, so that I can have keyboard focus on one window, and voice focus on another... Then I can talk while I type and get work done twice as fast.
Oh, yeah, Windows has dragon, like some other poster said, but it isn't integrated.
A new year calls for a new signature.
If your concern is beating Windows, then you'd better hope they hurry really quickly, because Whistler will ship with native voice support built-in.... probably this year.
As for what that means performance-wise, I have no idea at this point. We'll just have to wait and see.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Doesn't the newer versions of bash do this?
DWIM originally appeared in Interlisp for DEC 36-bit machines. It was a terrible idea. Despite claims to the contrary in the documentation, sometimes it would destroy work by misinterpreting something. I once typed "EDIT" while in a mode where "EDIT" wasn't permissible, and DWIM typed "=EXIT", throwing me out of Interlisp without saving. DWIM was too closely tuned to the typing error patterns of its originator.
To do this right, a corrector needs information about the potential consequences of what it is doing. For example, knowing whether something is easily undo-able is crucial.
Although it's not very hard to type pretty fast in an alphabetic script, it's a lot harder in chinese. The fastest you can get at the moment basically requires a special type of keyboard, one with all 200-odd radical components of characters on, and you type all the components that are in the character you want, and the software works out which character that is.
However, this technology is reportedly very hard to learn, and not at all widespread. Most people who type chinese characters use software where you type the sound of the character (in the roman alphabet) and it gives you a list of characters to pick from.
Chinese speech recognition could be much better than this. It could pick up on the tones a speaker uses much better than the roman alphabet can, and it wouldn't require them to know a foreign script.
This is all in theory though. I don't know how good the software out there is at the moment. There are over 1,000,000,000 people who can read chinese characters, but not many of them have a computer.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
People may *say* they type 140 wpm, but that's actually extremely fast, and when you're coding, you're using a lot of top-row special characters, which tend to slow even skilled typists down. And remember, actual typing speed = wpm - errors.
Try this test, folks. Time yourself. Do a typing test and subtract the errors you make from your score. My guess is that most of us won't get anywhere near 140 wpm. I touch type and I still only max out at about 70 wpm - and that's when I'm typing notes like this, not coding.
I still haven't decided how I feel about voice recognition, but 60-140 seems like a tremendously inflated speed range to me.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
can anyone confirm this? even if it's not true though, it makes for a fun story :)
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09
I had ViaVoice for a while. For coding it is pretty worthless because you have to switch to the military alphabet to do most variable names, and lots of keywords, and unix commands, and....
It did Ok for email messages, and was pretty allright for web browsing. Then again a good optical mouse with the scroolwheel is almost as good, and not that bad on my RSI.
If integrated in the UI it would probbably be useful for lots of things where you have to look over a button panel before deciding what to "click" on. I look forward to seeing it work, but doubt it will allow a whole lot more hands-off use. Er, let me clarify, it won't make hands-off as effecent as hands-on. People that can't use their hands, or shouldn't may well get a lot out of it.
Besides, it's just palin cool.
First off, I say this with no hostility or sarcasm, I am sorry that dyslexia has affected you or someone you know.
However, why should I as a user type Configuration instead of etc?
Feel free to write your own distro with aliases if you need to.
If you NEED long friendly names, most of the world has heard of an alternative OS called Windows. It prob even came preinstalled on your computer!
What you are asking is for the bloat to be removed, yet you insist that others suffer with the bloat of longer names that accomodate your disability.
This is equivalent to saying "No I don't just want every building to have wheelchair ramps, I want EVERYONE to have to cruise around in a wheelchair, just like me, damn it! Its just not fair!"
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
That said, I've had the opportunity to work with code that was written based on the 'per line' model. My Gawd, I've never seen so much empty space!
But yeah, keyboards rock, especially if you like macros. One combo, and 50 keystrokes get played out ...
I did have one real problem when I tried to implement that kind of efficiency in DragonSpeak. Started subbing one and two syllable words for multi-syllabic, and for frequently occuring phrases. Terible when that carries over into everyday conversation! The worst part is, I've discovered there were others who do the same thing, with the same consequences.
The best general style for using speech recognition is still for word processing ... first draft dictated, then go through with keboard to edit. (The cat prefers the first part, but the second interferes with lap time ;)
In 1981, Barbara Blackburn, from Salem, achieved 150wpm for 50 minutes (yes, minutes) on a mechanical typewriter. It's in the Guinness Book of Records.
n .h tml
http://sominfo.syr.edu/facstaff/dvorak/blackbur
You hear (pun) a lot about how integrating speech with user interface toolkits will solve the Accessibility Problem. Screen Scrapers can dive through the widget hierarchy and present an audio form to a blind user. The problem is, that these apps really don't work well. Trying to make an application that was developed for a sighted user work for a blind user really can't be solved at the toolkit level.
Solutions such as EmacsSpeak provide much more accessibilty for blind technical users.
And *I* will say *this* again: I know for an absolute, 100% fact that the world champion typist in the late 80's was at or near 200 words per minute.
200 cpm is pretty lame. Given an average 5 chars/word, that's only 40 wpm. Check the classifieds for typists/secretaries. Note the speeds being asked for. Minimum 40, usually 50, often 60 words per minute.
Instead of coming back with responses like "I just don't see..." or "I can't possibly believe..." why not go find a link that lists fast typing speeds as either wpm or cpm?
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Use your imagination here, nobody said you have to use it for dictation. I'd like to set up my own HAL-style computer with a few microphones throughout the house and program it to open xmms and play a song or control lights and possibly other appliances. Even better, allow it to take remote voice commands, so I could call my computer from my cell phone and tell it to start making coffee or run apt-get update.
In any case, there are a million and one cool things you can do with voice recognition (well, until your HAL-9001 tries to kill you and you end up dead or on another plane of evolution, whichever comes first), and I'm sure the ideas I have right now are just the tip of the iceberg.
My other
I can speak faster than I can type.
If I can have my speech recognized *accurately* then I can gain in productivity.
Real world proof are the articles of Charles W Moore at www.macopinion.com and www.applelinks.com
He creates all his articles using iListen for Macintosh.
If I can do the same with my linux boxen, then this is a dramatic leap forward for me.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
You don't have to spend hours training you coffee machine.
For that, all you need is command recognition. It's orders of magnitude simpler than dictation and can be done with little or no training.
Listen to ViaVoice's recordings of what it thinks you've said when playing with its correction feature and you'll see just how hard a job transcribing complete, dictated continuous speech with a wide vocabulary really is. Even deciding where one word ends and another begins is far from simple - but that sort of problem is so myuch simpler with a limited vocabulary and no continuous speech requirement. Both of which can be done with that sort of device.
I agree about coughing and, erm, well, thinking, er about what you, er, were trying to say. I always found I needed fair presence of mind to get something readable (especially if formal) down on the page. If you think the above is exaggerated, try dictation software and you'll see what I mean.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
So? There is still a relatively small set of similar queries to be done in Joe Average's life, so even if this has to be explicity programmed, it would still be incredibly useful, and wastly more useful than actually walking over to the computer and click on an icon or write something on the command line.
If I had moderator points, I would have modded the original comment high.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I went to school with a guy who is *still* looking forward to the day when Windoze WP's can keep up with his typing. When I first met him, he typed about 140 words per minute. The usual 'cliteky-click' of typing we all hear was more like a quiet buzz for him. He had to take breaks every few minutes so that the old 9in Mac he was using could catch up with him and he could look for errors.
The keyboard was fast enough to keep up with him, but the WP software itself wasn't. Go fig...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Some years ago there was a programmable keyboard made by Siemens (and probably a bunch of other companis, but that's the one I saw) that had a little LCD display in every key. The LCD's resolution was pretty crappy (8x8 or so), but you could program every key differently.
There just wasn't any software that used it, and pretty much nobody used any other than the standard layout, so it didn't pay off. Maybe nowadays you could try it again, for gamers. You would need a better resolution though.
Another thing that would be interesting would be keyboards where you change the shape of the keys, too. You're just not gonna get force feedback on the keys, and that's a big problem. Would be cool, nonetheless. ;)
I see a number of postings here to the effect that voice recognition, especially for dictation, will be largely useless. The problem is that these postings are considering the use of voice recognition as a replacement for typing within the current crop of user interfaces.
The true power of voice recognition is not in replacing the keyboard. It comes with allowing new forms of interaction with a computer. Consider the simple task of checking the weather. Pulling up a browser and heading to weather.com is no big task, but why would I want to sit at my computer and have to do that just so I can decide how heavy a sweater I'll need for the day? Why not just ask the computer to read me the forecast while I'm getting dressed?
Many people would assume in this scenario that one would call out: "Computer, browse to h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot weather dot com. Read page." How about simply calling a script intead that does all the hard work behind the scenes? "Computer, what is the weather forecast for today?" The use of predefined grammars, as the article describes, will make such queries very reliable as they will be much easier to recognize.
This may have been a simple example, but hopefully it gets the point across. Voice recognition is not going to replace typing. As many have said, some people can type much faster than they can dictate text. Once you start considering higher level interaction with the computer, however, the situation changes, and voice recognition systems will really show their colors.
-kris
If you thought having some yuppie ensconced in a SUV barreling around while yakking on his/her cell phone was dangerous, just wait until you get some sysadmin trying to reconfigure his/her server using voice control while driving...
So, Windows 200(1|2|3) = OS/2 1996. Glad the Windows world is catching on. Maybe now they'll adopt a system-wide object model like OS/2 1992.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
Speech recognition isn't perfect. It's not technology you can use casually, but it is usable with practice and training (for the software and the user). John Ousterhout, the creator of Tcl/Tk, has been using it for years after he developed problems with his wrist.
Until a year ago, there were four leading speech recognition firms out there: Lernout & Hauspie, Dragon Systems, IBM, and Philips (barely). Dragon was near bankrupcy, and L&H bought them last year. Now L&H is being rocked by financial scandals (see this list of articles on them in CNET), and may go under as well.
IBM, on the other hand, has supported their ViaVoice SDK for Linux for a long time. They also sell their ViaVoice dication software for Linux.
Without IBM, speech recognition might die. I'm glad to see they're pushing it futher, especially on Linux.
P.S.: "Voice recogintion" identifies people; "speech recognition" turns what they say into text.
P.P.S. It's possible to bind sneezes, sniffles, coughs, etc., into "null text."
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Okay, somewhere in there is a wise-ass comment about the usefulness of voice-recognition for porn-surfing, but I won't stoop to that level... :-)
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
The only drawback with the OS/2 version is that it only supports discrete, not continuous, dictation. This means that you need to pause between each word. For voice navigation, that's not a problem. You also have to go through a three-hour "training" session if you want it to work well.
So before you get all excited about how Linux might beat Windows, you should not forgot that OS/2 is real competitor here.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Am I the only one who finds that a properly selected task specific MP3 playlist can add that critical 10%+ performance boost that spells the difference between "adequate" and r-r-rippin'?
I especially value it when I am doing literary stuff ("Mood music" if you will) or need to pick up the pace for a deadline. And then there's the selection of "We kick the world's ass" anthems that I save for emergencies when you have to either go into ultra-arrogance or lapse into despair (Warning: not for use when you may have to deal with actual humans intermittently!)
Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't make it false.
I have an electronic keyboard that plays a certain piece of music at 220 beats/minute. That's 220/60 = 3.6 beats/second. Since all of the notes in the music are quarter (or shorter) that's 12-16 notes/second. I've seen this piece performed by an actual human at roughly the same speed my keyboard plays it. Amazing, yes. Impossible, clearly not.
Piano and typing use a lot of the same hand movements--in fact, typing is EASIER since the keys are closer together AND don't require much force to press down.
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
ViaVoice is Open Source???? There was nothing, either in the linked article or in its comments, that would imply that. Can anyone provide a link to confirm?
Well,
:%s/stupidity/intelligence/
is much quicker to type, than using the mouse to:
Edit|Search and Replace
Search "stupidity", Replace "intelligence"
But it isn't faster to type than ctrl-H, stupidity, TAB, intelligence, Alt-A. That's the key sequence in MSVC.
"ftutec buoyd fpaat"
getting"static void start()"
on the screen. Or"brmmpf fbhurrrgle"
becoming". profile"
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We're talking about *integrated* VR here, not just a VR application.
Both Dragon's Naturally Speaking and IBM's ViaVoice run under windows. Dragon is *excellent* at taking dictation and writing letters. I've found it far superior to ViaVoice. On the other hand, it's not so good at controlling the rest of the computer. When it comes to moving windows, opening menus and applications and browsing the web, ViaVoice reigns supreme.
What IBM was never able to do was to tightly integrate that sort of GUI control into the system. This is what IBM is doing with QT.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Most of the coders I know type anywhere from 60-140 words per minute. When coding, this measure of speed goes out the window, but it still is a fair shade faster than actually discussing what they are in the midst of coding.
Most writers I know type anywhere from 60-170 wpm. I type on the lower end of this scale, about 80-90 wpm. Again, this is significantly faster than I can comfortably speak.
When *editing* code or text, however, voice commands cannot hold a candle to a combination of mouse and keyboard commands, especially with newer trackballs and 'wheel' mice.
"Page up. Page up. Page up. Stop. No, go up. Stop! Not delete! Damnit!"
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Pretty much as soon as IBM's ViaVoice toolkit was available GVoice came out. From memory it lets you bind voice accelerators in the same way you bind keyboard accelerators. Check out this article about it in the GNOME summary from June 1999.
Just don't mention "rm -rf" when you're near the microphone ...
Hah - I actually tried this the day I left my former employer. It was only my desktop workstation, but I didn't want their creepy fingers prying into my files, so I did su -l, rm -rf / - the command returned an error claiming I didn't have a lock on a certain process, and it couldn't complete the command.
If I hadn't been lazy, it would have been nice to code up some wipe tool that was used in Cryptonomicon...
- passion
Ah yes, OS/2. I loved it. I still do. If there was any support for it I would still be using it.
The OO desktop beats anything else I have ever seen. Add on ObjectDesktop and it got even better. Over the past few years using Linux/BSD and KDE, I've been thinking how to do the same thing under Unix. I've come to the conclusion that you can make it LOOK like Warp easily enough, but it will take a hell of a lot of work to make it act like it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The point of integrating voice recog with the user interface toolkit seems to be that the applications themselves need not be made voice-aware. Just as an application today doesn't care if a widget is activated by direct mouse click or keyboard shortcut (um, at least in sensible toolkits it doesn't, I assume Qt is sensible in this regard), this makes voice a transparent input method. Nice.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}