IBM ViaVoice for Linux

malacai writes " IBM has announced that ViaVoice will be available for Linux." Excellent-IBM does another good thing. Anyone played around with ViaVoice much? I'm interested in potentially using it-once my wrists fall apart.

Comments

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine someone suddenly yelling out in a office environment; "FORMAT C:\!!!" and running away...
Prank of the future, I suppose! :-)

(or how about "shutdown -h now")

Re: Sounds like great fun! :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah...but you shouldn't BE root (should always only be su-ing momentarily) - so your voice-recog system should never see reboot or shutdown in your path.

Re: Sounds like great fun! :-)

[Brian Feldman]

Hmm... my Unix systems seem to have reboot(8) and shutdown(8) (in /sbin of course) ;)

Re: Sounds like great fun! :-)

[vagn]

[1] ibsen:/home/vagn $ format c:
ksh: format: not found
[2] ibsen:/home/vagn $ reboot
ksh: reboot: not found
[3] ibsen:/home/vagn $ shutdown -h now
ksh: shutdown: not found
[4] ibsen:/home/vagn $

Not a problem on unix systems.

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, format C:\ is a DOS command not a Linux command :(

Home Version for Win32 Only Supports MSWord

[Anonymous Coward]

My main complaint with the Win32 version for home
use is that it will only let you dictate either into the ViaVoice mini-wordprocessor, or into MSWord 97. It won't work with ANY other wordprocessors, not even WordPad, Word2000, or notepad.

Hopefully the Linux version will be much more open in the list of supported applications into which you can directly dictate.

Via Voice

[Anonymous Coward]

I was really disapointed with Via Voice. Dragon Dictate seems to have much better recognition. Ah well, how does that saying go.. something about licking a horse?

Launch another bash window without the mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

This will not be all that great for coding, but for other portions of UI manipulation it'll be pretty spiffy.

Quake Hack?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey I wonder if somebody is smart enough to do Quake hack for Viavoice...This would be extremely cool.

how about for something else. maybe for once. I can truely multi task on commanding my computer. one way through typing, another screen using speech command...

more interface to my pudder'....
this will do till they make that direct nerve system interface.

So, is it out??? :-/

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked the web site mentioned in the press release...and nada; not a single mention of a Linux version.

Damn, and it was going to be an impulse buy....

I used a bundled version under OS/2 a couple years ago, so I'm quite interested in using the much newer version under Linux. Should be nice!

HORAY!! Good bye NT! It was nice knowing you

[Anonymous Coward]

I can finally and I mean finally use linux as my main os. I don't run games and I am very dyslexic and I have trouble writing papers for school and posting articles in slashdot. :-) I usually just post here in messed up spelling but use NT and via voice for everyday school stuff. I also use code warrior and thats being ported to linux and I already use code crusader. :-)

HA!!!!

I am very happy. I can finally give gates the finger. The 2 games I do play are quake deathmatch and hal-life and they both been ported to linux.

I want to know if freebsd can run all linux executalbes natively and just as fast. THe graphics speed is lower in linux then NT and I heard freebsd can do stuff like high end processingg like quake in high res. better. Has anyone tried it in freebsd?

Dragon keeping Linux port quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Dragon is keeping quite about its Linux port. Corel WordPerfect has still not received a commitment from Dragon for WordPerfect 2000 for Linux. Perhaps Corel will partner with ViaVoice?

From: Support@dragonsys.com [SMTP:Support@dragonsys.com]
Sent: Monday, April 26, 1999 10:59 AM
Subject: Re: Linux?
Hello,
We have no product for Linux at this time and we cannot say if or when we may in the future.
Regards,
Dan King
Dragon Technical Support
//////
To: Support/Dragon Systems USA@Dragon Systems USA
cc:
Subject: Linux?
I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred for Windows 98. When will Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred for Linux be released?

The PROBLEM with Voice Recognition

[Anonymous Coward]

You're way behind in technology. Continuous speech recognition (which means you don't have to pause between words - you just speak normally, but clearly) products have been around for (web) years. I think the first came out in 1997 or so..

Re:The PROBLEM with Voice Recognition

[Anonymous Coward]

Voice Type is a VERY old release. Get ViaVoice Gold or ViaVoice 98. Both are continuous speech products and work so much better than Voice Type that there is not even any point in trying to compare them.

Wonder if I helped this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was I who had the influence. ;)
I sent them email YESTERDAY asking for VoiceType to be open sourced. They know how to jump when I say jump. ;) (just timing on my part but every email has got to help).

Now just give me OS/2's Java performance on Linux and there will be only the WPS to keep me there. KDE with KOM/OpenParts and GNOME make a jump very easy.

ViaVoice: depends on the implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

Before ViaVoice there was VoiceType for OS/2 and it works quite well. I think that is due to the very nice multi-tasking of the OS/2 kernel. Linux also multi-tasks well and I'm hopeful that ViaVoice on Linux will works as good or better than VoiceType for OS/2.

A quick test of taskswitching on Windows and OS/2 resulted in the following:
(Doing 400,000 semaphor set/clears and 200,000 stask switches between 2 threads )

Windows 95 : ~13 sec to complete
Windows NT4: ~3.5 sec to complete
OS/2 Warp 4: ~1.3 sec to complete

I'll have to do a Linux test now.

Installation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone managed to get it installed? I'm trying to install it without screwing up the beta JDK 1.2 install, which would happen if I put glibc-2.1 on. So I'm seeing a bunch of missing packages libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2, for example. Where would I find *that*? rpmfind.net doesn't seem to have a clue.

voice recognition on amiga !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Beleive it or not, there is a voice-recognition package for the amiga!! Go to the aminet and search VoiceShell !

In my amiga's heyday, ( 33MHz '030 overclocked to a whopping 42 MHz !) I had it set up so anyone in my family could use it for mundane system operations - It can run any arexx command based on words it recognises, making system-wide automation possible ( the commodity itself also has an arexx port, thus making for all manner of fun designing dynamically-loaded word databases)

The half-life port was started last fall

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 90% sure it was half-life that was suppose to have been proted. Maybe it was sin. Anyway the ceo of the company who made half-life said he was making aport and their would only be a 25% performance hit. I believe the article was here at slashdot. However it was long ago and might have been deleted.

The half-life port was started last fall

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 90% sure it was half-life that was suppose to have been proted. Maybe it was sin. Anyway the ceo of the company who made half-life said he was making aport and their would only be a 25% performance hit. I believe the article was here at slashdot. However it was long ago and might have been deleted.

_not_ open source

[Anonymous Coward]

as far as I can tell. I wonder if they'll even offer it for platforms other than Intel.

I don't get it..

[Anonymous Coward]

The URL is:

http://www.ibm.com/viavoice

On the right hand side of the window, there's a "Developers corner" link. From there, there's a link for the SDK for Linux (it's presently a developers toolkit - all of the pieces needed to build full-blown applications, as well as a couple of sample applications.

Jeff

Re:I don't get it..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if, like me, you had severe Osteoarthritis in both wrists at the grand old age of 36, you would understand why speech recognition is so useful. If I can run speech recognition with Linux, I may be able to get rid of NT.....

Home Version for Win32 Only Supports MSWord

[Anonymous Coward]

A linux version, I suspect, is unlikely to suffer
from that specific difficulty. :)

Seems LessTif is a requirement...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Yes, lesstif is required, but there are other lib problems unrelated to this.
2) Lesstif is not a window manager, it's a Motif (widget package) replacement. Maybe you're confusing Motif and the Motif Window Manager (mwm)?

digital answering machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah! Why aren't there any answering machine daemons to take advantage of my obsolete modem. To check system uptime, press or say "1"

Installation?

[Anonymous Coward]

viavoice needs rh 6.0 to be installed first.

Re:One key point

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard rumours that there may be a Linux port of the Lotus software. Nothing firm, though. I guess we have to wait and see....

Re:phone-based speech recognition

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand, this sort of recognition is being worked on now by several companies. Probably be available early next year. How good it will be is another question...

Dragon Sys looking for Senior SW Engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of Voice Recognition software for Linux... does the following hint that Dragon Systems will be coming out with a Linux version?

Senior Software Engineer - Job Code: BB
The primary requirement for this position is a track record in successful and varied software engineering. This person should have experience in user interface design and multi-platform software developmemt in C++. Windows, Unix, Linux, or Macintosh experience would be useful. Python, Java and Visual Basic experience would also be useful. This person should have at least four years of industry experience, and a degree in software engineering, systems engineering, or equivalent experience. Customer contact skills are also valuable, either in project leadership, specification, or consultancy.

Touchy feelies with Viavoice

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Viavoice under Win32. To get good recognition you need to do the full training exercise, which consists of reading about an hour of text; Mark Twain if you're a 'Merkin, or Alice in Wonderland if you're a Brit (or an Australian; apparently IBM is yet to realise there is a difference ;). Recognition is pretty good; you can use it effectively for prose. I found you can talk faster than you can type (and I can type pretty fast). Typos do creep in and these are frustrating. This sort of software has a long way to go, but conversely it's already come a long way anyway! One bitch with ViaVoice; for some reason it slowed down MS Word; added maybe 10 second to the MS Word startup (even if you're not using the MS Word support, which is painfully slow anyway). The Wordpad is the best way to enter text, but lacks a multi-level undo feature! And yep, it's easy to delete half an hours work. SAVE. SAVE . SAVE. :)

TV Remotes

[whoop]

Is there any sort of programmable IR devices that can control TV/Stereo/etc remote controls? There just never is any of those "universal" remotes that can do all my devices. Either they handle the VCR, but not the TV, etc. If there was some device (and programming API) for Linux, we could just add new devices easily. Are there any?

HORAY!! Good bye NT! It was nice knowing you

[whoop]

Half-Life has been ported to Linux?? Many a day has been spent wandering that game, and now with TFC I can barely tear myself away from my computer. Or did you just mean "should be ported" to Linux?

Free Beta?

[whoop]

Sweet, definately. Hopefully it'll be a nice long beta period too :).

The PROBLEM with Voice Recognition

[whoop]

I bought a year-old copy of ViaVoice for like $10 or $15 recently. It was able to handle natural speech just fine. You may be thinking of an earlier product line, VoiceType maybe.

But any voice recognition program for Linux should come with some sort of SDK so we can then make macros/scripts to interface with any program. If a company provides us with a decent shell, I'll be more than willing to help in and develop some of these interfaces.

not accurate enough

[Tony Shepps]

Yeah, but you gotta admit, that transcript is fucking beautiful poetry. I mean if it was always that good, I might consider using it!

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[John Campbell]

Oh, yeah, and that's quick and easy to say. :)

Basic problem with voice recognition for geeks. Code is easy to type, hard to speak.

Launch another bash window without the mouse

[John Campbell]

That's actually a two-keystroke operation for me, anyway. I've got my left Evil-Empire key bound to a fvwm popup menu, which comes up with the first entry - "Local Eterm" - selected. So one keystroke to pop up the menu, Enter to activate the selection, and, if I'm lucky, it'll even come up in focus. If not, well, Alt-Shift-Arrows'll focus it pretty quickly.

ViaVoice is cool

[gavinhall]

Posted by hrearden:

I bought ViaVoice back in June of LAst year when it came out. It was Great back then. The text to speech reading was a bit weak (reminded me of my old Apple II+) and it did not support swear words out of the box. But otherwise it was nice. I used it to fill out and submit Lotus Notes documents, and I think you can do it with the web as well. Overall a great product for the money, as long as the novelty does not wear off.

UI integration?

[gavinhall]

Posted by Arborius:

Most speech control apps work best when they're integrated into the UI, or are at least able to interact with it in some way. Anyone know what plans Motif/GTK/QT and/or the X Consortium have to provide hooks for speech recognition
integration into X?

Seems LessTif is a requirement...

[downwa]

Actually, multiple widget libraries can be used simultaneously on the same window/desktop manager. You can run GTK apps under Motif, GNOME, KDE, etc.

There are some extra features of GNOME and KDE which may not work across widget sets (e.g. drag and drop) until GNOME and KDE get standardized (which they are working on).

But you can still run the program under your favorite environment.

Via Voice

[tak*]

VV works fine. I've used it several times and it has a 95% accuracy rate. Its great for dictation of long letters and can greatly reduce RSI. But for normal operation, giving it commands, like "delete file 'titsXXX.jpg'" is still out of the question. Especially in a business environment. I wouldn.t want other employees knowing exactly what i'm doing all the time. There is a measure of security using the keyboard of mouse to do system related tasks. But this is still a good thing.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.

Didn't Gates also say...

[MikeBall]

When asked about the y2k issue...

"Because 2k is *more* than enough cache for anybody!"

Michael J. Ball
Open Source Who's Who

Seems LessTif is a requirement...

[MikeBall]

According to the Linux link at http://www.software.ibm.com/speech/

Lesstif is a requirement. Does it have to be your operational window manager???

They also have a gtk based demo, so I'm confused.



Michael J. Ball
Open Source Who's Who

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[GrenDel Fuego]

Actually, I was testing some voice recognition software, and my sister pulled that trick on me. STarted yelling "format, delete, erase".

I'm not sure if that normally would have worked, but I was using a demo version of the software that only worked with a few example phrases, so nothing bad happened.

Fine for human languages

[Tet]

I used ViaVoice a while back, and was impressed by the accuracy. Speed sucked, but then I was running on a machine significantly below their minimum spec, and had to wait for it to catch up every now and then.

Basically, ViaVoice is an excellent product, and is pretty useful for dictating documents in human languages. Naturally, it's hopeless for coding or entering commands at a shell prompt, but that's more because speech will never be a natural way to communicate stuff like that than because of any failing in ViaVoice. As others have mentioned, it could prove useful for X10 automation, though.

could be used for homeautomation- wow!!

[chirayu]

This is superb. I should have tracked this stuff earlier. Anyway it is time for a shopping spree now. :-)

CP

Phone based speech rec

[Chris Hiner]

Speech Rec with a microphone and sound card is a lot easier than speech rec over a phone line. The narrow bandwidth and (relatively) low sampling rate make it much much harder to get high accuracy over a phone. Standard phone lines run at 64kb/s 8 bit, 8khz sampling. And the high/low filters, that limit the range to 300hz to 3400hz or so...

Chris

not accurate enough

[flats]

I used viavoice for windows this last summer..It has on the average of 90% accuracy..which sounds great but thats one error every 10 words....and it's not like you can load up irc and start yapping.

It's a promising product and I'm glad to see it being ported to linux...but it has a ways to go.

Derek

I don't get it..

[digits]

What's all this about speech-recognition anyway? It will never be as effecient as using the keyboard anyway...
Have a look at Lojban for a neat approach to the problem of making a computer understand grammar..

The other way around, Say.

[dav]

This is not actually text-to-speech but it is close and the speech is really good. There may be some new pre-processors which make it text-to-speech now (it's been a year since I've messed with this).

Check the mbrola homepage.

GNOME/GTK Integration?

[Lightn]

I have seen this mentioned, but I want to ask a direct question. Does the design of GTK facilitate Speech recognition integration?

If we could get ViaVoice (or any other speech recognition software) to interface with the GTK toolkit well, you could suddenly have a huge number of applications that are speech enabled. Instead of having to make every application compliant... (or have to make it compliant to work WELL)

Integration into the Window Manager was one of the criteria that was discussed in some essay a while back about creating a flexible UI for the future.

The PROBLEM with Voice Recognition

[Snock]

Indeed, I have continuous speech recognition software for my SPARCstation(s). It only runs under SunOS/Solaris and NT unfortunately. I can't remember the name of it off hand, but I discovered it while searching through some of the speech synthesis sites. If you've got SunOS or Solaris it's interesting to play with and would work OK for a bit of home/whatever automation.

full duplex kvoicecontrol

[navindra]

I am using Linux 2.2.1 which claims that the Soundblaster driver is full-duplex but indeed I just tested it and I can't seem to record and play at the same time. Hmmm.

The 2.2.1 driver actually seems very nice and is definitely not OSS-lite, rather it is a version enhanced by Alan Cox. The japanese AWE patches are also integrated.

I'll give ALSA a shot sometime.

kvoicecontrol is pretty wicked.

[navindra]

Launch applications (or perform any string of commands) by speaking into your mike. It works amazingly well.

For example, when I say "connect to internet", kvoicecontrol does "say connecting; /usr/local/bin/nconnect". 'say' is a cheesy speech synthesis program and 'nconnect' is a script that controls X-ISP remotely. Pretty nifty

My only beef with kvoicecontrol right now is that it monopolises (sp?) my sound card even though the AWE64 is full duplex. Fortunately all I have to do is right click on the docked kvoicecontrol to disable it.

get kvoicecontrol here

not accurate enough

[eponymous cohort]

I had only one experience with ViaVoice, and it got virtually nothing correct:

Me: "Hello, testing, does this thing work?"

ViaVoice transcript: "The up north Perot gawking sprawl"

I'm sure this can be blamed on a configuration error. (I didn't install or configure) :)

Didn't Gates also say...

[eponymous cohort]

...That 640K is enough memory for everybody, in 1981?

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[eponymous cohort]

All the easier!

for a in /dev/[h,s]d?
do
dd if=/dev/zero of=$a bs=1k count=512
done

Don't try this at home!

The other way around, Say.

[eponymous cohort]

There are a few, look in:
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/

Free Alternatives?

[eponymous cohort]

look in metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/speech

There are a couple of speech recognition-type things there

Free Alternatives?

[Avus]

Does anybody know free voice recognition software?
KVoiceControl has been mentioned, are there other ones available.

I've got nothing against ViaVoice, but for easier tasks (command recognition, easy texts), it is overkill.

There are a lot of universities working on that, so there should be something available.

Half-Life port

[Duke of URL]

There is no port yet for Half-Life for Linux. I did read that a server version for mulitiple player Half-life was in the works. Try looking up archived info at http://www.bluesnews.com/

With the new TFC update to Half-Life there is a new spray paint tag that you can plaster anywhere you like in the game "LINUX RULES" so it shows that somebody at Valve likes Linux.

If you play Half-Life or Team Fortress multiplayer look for me the Duke of URL. I'll be spraying the LINUX RULES everywhere.

Not a replacement for typing

[wik]

ViaVoice is an excellent product (at least under Win32). Sometimes it amazes me as to how it understands what I dictate, of course other times it plainly has no clue. In general it's very good if you have time to go back and correct whatever it has written. It is not suitable as a complete replacement for typing, since it expects you to be dictating in a natural voice (e.g. infrequent stops/pauses between words). Telepathic speech isn't understood clearly by the engine. You would not be able to use this efficiently at a bash prompt or for coding.
I suppose if you wanted to write your own grammar (which is possible with Win32 tools right now), you might be able to make a C or a Perl grammar, but moving around the code would be painful.
Hopefully ViaVoice will integrate with most applications easily, as it does under Win32. Currently, you can speak to whatever textbox has focus under Win32, and if developers use the free SDK, more functionality (e.g. FONT BOLD ON) could be added to programs.
I don't expect wordperfect to support ViaVoice, since they already seem to have a contract with Dragon Systems.

You got it all wrong

[GiMP]

They are releasing beta apps that use viavoice.. Lesstif isn't a window manager just a toolkit, such as gtk.. they are gonna release a backend which can be used by applications using any toolkit.

Old stuff

[toriver]

"What's all this about speech-recognition anyway? It will never be as effecient as using the keyboard anyway..."

Plus, how many years ago was it that Anirog produced the Voice Commander for C64? Fifteen or so? Has the technology been sleeping ever since?

Linux viavoice link working for anyone?

[FreeUser]

Has anyone managed to get the "linux" link referenced in the article (on the IBM viavoice page) to work? The link is there (the last one in the column of ultra-small text on the right of IBM's main ViaVoice page), but alas the linux viavoice page itself appears to be missing.

could be used for homeautomation... Even better

[Athos]

Hmmm. combine an X10 system with ViaVoice and a wireless headset.

Image: walking through the kitchen, telling "Hal" to turn the lights on.

Who needs a wearable?

Dragon Sys looking for Senior SW Engineer

[Athos]

Sent a quick e-mail off to Dragonsys today. Nice, polite e-mail.

I like their Micros~1 OS stuff (somewhat better than Via), but I'm not often UNDER Micros~1 anymore.

Old stuff

[RoKlein]

Speech recognition is currently not about efficiency compared to a keyboard. It is just a great tool for those with special needs. If you have a thoroughly trained system you might just be able to dictate as fast as normal speech.

not accurate enough

[Raindog]

I found that it depends alot on individual voice patterns. Some people, like myself, simply talk in ways Viavioce doesnt like. I got maybe 75% accuracy, with training. Some friends tried it, while it was trained for me, and got a far higher accuracy, 90 something.

Home Version for Win32 Only Supports MSWord

[Hammer]

You can be _pretty_ certain that it won't support M$ Word on Linux, guess why ;-)

Naturally Speaking.

[Zebulun]

I threw it away. Im glad I never paid for
that software. It did, at times write what i
spoke but was only about 20% accurate on average.
I dont recommend it.

-Z

phone-based speech recognition

[th0m]

if you don't think speech recognition can be done over the phone, try calling 1-888-573-8255 and FEEL THE POWER.

or something.

could be used for homeautomation

[Ricochet]

There are a few of us working on just that. BTW the LIRC can be found on my homepage but it may not be the most up to date code. I better add a link to the LIRC project. My page is a place to collect software and links related to Linux HA. I am also writting some software but I mostly modify others software (see my page ref's below).

I really think that this something the Linux HA really needs. Of course this can be useful in other areas also. I plan to purchase it as soon as possible and see if I can intergrate it into the stuff I'm working on. But I won't forget that other people may not have it so my code won't depend on it.


Linux Home Automation - Neil Cherry ncherry@home.net
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lig htsey/52 (Graphics GB)

additional info

[Ricochet]

Hey not a problem, I'm just the librarian but one day I hope to have some of my programs posted on my pages too!

Link to IBM's page is up.

[Tekmage]

http://www.software.ibm.com /is/voicetype/dev_linux.html

ViaVoice+Text2Speech = displayless solution!

[Tekmage]

I like this! Not only could you run it mobile/wearable, you could literally use it right over the phone. "Ask" your home system for a piece of information, or tie it into the mail-server at work through the voice-mail system. Lots of potential.

Now, if only I could find that Linux link mentioned in the article... If someone finds it, please post a link.

ViaVoice: depends on the implementation

[CodeShark]

While I am very interested in this announcement, the IBM voice technology I've worked with in Win32 (95 and NT) thus far is not sufficient for full-time use yet. I have used ViaVoice Gold for a couple of years now, and even with IBM's longest voice template "training", occasionally ViaVoice goes loopy and acts like it's dictating to itself, rather than translating from my voice. Thus I have not as yet been able to recommend the technology to my client customers.

However, the state of the art will obviously advance. Optical Charaacter Recognition (OCR) technology four years ago was a "probable buy", however the accuracy has gone up and cost down, so much that it is now a "should buy", and any company requiring significant amounts of document translation is behind the times if it does not have at least one employee competently using OCR.

In voice recognition, IBM is definitely one of the "to market" leaders, especially in the consumer area. My thoughts are that with the cleaner OS code in Linux may actually help IBM develop code that is much more powerful than the Win32 versions. IMHO the number one thing IBM can do to help ViaVoice succeed in the Linux arena (other than GPL'ing the code, which they probably will not do) is provide crystal clear documentation of the API and a powerful SDK to allow other programmers to develop "voice-drivable" applications. This would be similar to how IN-CUBE can be used to drive various applications from small voice commands. BTW, IN-CUBE is already available on Solaris, so maybe the Linux community can persuade CommandCorp to port their product (?)

The faster this technology develops, the better for all of us, especially the motion disabled who can use this technology as a true window to the world. The same group which produces ViaVoice also has a screen reader for the visually impaired which I would like to see in Linux as well.

Let IBM know of your interest, offer to act as a BETA tester, etc. The more we get involved in projects like these, the more quickly Linux will succeed in breaking the M$ stranglehold on the industry.

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[Mr. Piccolo]

Unfortunately, it won't work if you aren't root, voice recognition or not.

Wrists Wearing Out: IBM ViaVoice

[sunshine]

I have used ViaVoice Exec and now 98 for some time. The real benefit is not in direct text processing(not bad accuracy though 98%), but the macros.You can build almost anything from predefined chunks of text.

By the way we make the noise cancelling headsets so we have an interest in these things working properly.

Cheers S

Used ViaVoice at Work then Switched

[Anm]

Last summer we experimented with a couple of the voice recognition and speech synthesis engines available for Win32. In the end, we choose M$'s speak engine. It had a voice quality ten times better than ViaVoice. Dictation was comparable, but ViaVoice required more training. And the price was right.

Something the Linux platform is missing is a standard API to access this stuff. The ability to switch engines to a huge time-saver to our project.

One key point

[AJWM]

A point I haven't seen anyone here mention -- probably because many of us already use Linux on our desktops.

But this is a clear signal that IBM considers Linux viable as a desktop OS -- who needs voice recognition on servers? (Yes, the Corel apps are desktop apps too, but IBM carries a bit more clout than Corel.) Is Lotus next?

Touchy feelies with Viavoice

[JohnnyCannuk]

Hey, what does a Canadian use to do full training? Anything by Farley Mowat or Robert Service I suppose....(Maybe a good imitation of Foster Hewit anouncing "THE GOAL")


hehehe

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[Ellis-D]

Yeah, but reboot is a command!!!
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"

could be used for homeautomation

[Ellis-D]

To the tune of clapper..
Lights on
Light off
Light on
.. I can just imagine it..
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"

I don't get it..

[zagmar]

okay...think about it this way. I've done a (very) little stand-up comedy. You wouldn't believe how much material I've lost because I wasn't sitting at a computer. Also, being an aspiring filmmaker/screenwriter without a laptop, I write alot by hand. A reliable speech-recog program would be great for getting either recorded riffs (stuff I talk about to myself in the car) or handwritten stuff into the computer without the boredom of typing.

Didn't Gates say a few months back...

[cowbutt]

...that "Linux would *never* get any sexy apps like voice recognition"? :)

(Never mind that kvoice was already under development.)

This is cool

[Mr T]

This would be a wicked time for IBM to show some committment to the community by having some GNOME and KDE support in ViaVoice. It could be sweet.

The other way around, Say.

[oakley]

This is a bit off topic, but is there some program that can say words for me in Linux? I remember on my friend's Amiga there was some way to type some words and then the Amiga read it back in some rather silly voice.

Maybe something useless like this could be done then:

$ quota -v | say

rsynth

[oakley]

Indeed, I found one. rsynth includes a "say" command. Just have to see if I can tweak this a bit, the voice is rather too much robotic for me.

could be used for homeautomation

[ianna]

Well, not only lights...
you can controll the thermostats via web (or voice), or check if doors and windows are locked while you are already at the office, dial to an ISP by saying "check mail", etc.

there are many possibilities..

additional info

[ianna]

I forgot to say that you can find more info about HA at:

http://members.home.net/ncherry/

(sorry Neil!)

could be used for homeautomation

[ianna]

Linux has all the potential to be the core of a homeautomation system... Voice control could be just one part of it...

Lots of sw is already available to control X-10 devices

Heyu - http://www.prado.com/~dbs/
Xtend - http://www.jabberwocky.com/software/xtend/
TKx10 - http://www.houseofhack.com/tkx10/
WebX10 - http://members.tripod.com/~famewolf/webx10/

IR control is available using

http://members.home.net:80/ncherry/common/lirc-0 .5.3.tgz

Now we just need someone that integrates some function in PHP and we can controll the house via web.

Well, if Viavoice will provide voice controll and KDE a desktop interface, what will stop world domination even in this area? :)

Marco

Oh, it's Loglan? Yay!

[SEWilco]

Oh, I see. Lojban is good old Loglan, expressed in its full vocabulary and grammar. .iuru'e

Good Stuff

[DrZircon]

This is great news. I have used Naturally Speaking on W*****s as a wrist saving device and it is
very impressive. A Linux system will be a god send if it is as good. (I don't know how good ViaVoice is, but IBM's track record in this area is good)

Naturally Speaking.

[DrZircon]

Well, I get 98-99% accuracy all the time.....

ViaVoice: depends on the implementation

[whistler54]

Hey, I think I woulda loved viavoice if I coulda gotten past the first four voice training screens. The damn thing didn't like my voice I guess. I musta wasted two days trying to get past that fourth reading. "Hello, this is yet another test for the voice of the user to let the computer recognize each of these words...." or something like that....heh..... anyhow....I'm ready to give it another shot... :)

I don't get it..

[instant]

Speech recognition is a holy grail to many people
like myself. I may be able to type 120+ WPM, but what
good does that do when my hands hurt like hell the minute
they touch a keyboard. That's the price we pay for
years of constant computer use -- about 18 years in
my case. I'd rather type, but it's getting too difficult. Anything that might
save my career and my hobby is a godsend, even if it isn't open-source.

My HMO doesn't give a damn about my problems... Anyone have the download URL for this program?

VoiceType is great technology

[Shotgun]

Once again, we have technology introduced that solves one problem, and people call it crap because it doesn't solve THEIR problem. I've used VoiceType (the predecessor [sp?]) of ViaVoice on OS/2 for several years now (it came with Warp 4). No, it wasn't any good for coding. But when you got to the documentation it was a god-send. Unfortunately, they computer is not 'intelligent' and will type what it hears. So if you pause to say 'uh' and 'hmm', it types 'uh' and 'hmm'. It's also neat to see what rustling papers say. However, if you scribble up a rough outline so that you can dictate in a semi-fluid manner, it makes for an excellent first draft system. You'll still have to go back and proofread, but not any more than you would with manual typing and the dictation is WAY faster. (note: try typing several paragraphs w/o hitting the backspace key.)

Wonder if I helped this happen?

[TheLurker]

About 2-3 months ago I wrote IBM a letter asking them to port via voice to linux, sighting a need for good voice recognition software for linux. I want to be able to voice control the linux powered PC in my car :)

Though it's probably not likely my e-mail had any effect on this decision, it's kind cool to think it might have.

MP3?

[Bobface]

Combine this with the MP3 player from last week, sounds like a major home brew audio system!!!

(AWE64 + Cheap SB) = Voice Controlled MP3!

Hooray!

ViaVoice: depends on the implementation

[mdaniel]

I had a similar problem, but a new Creative Labs Ensoniq PCI fixed it. Come to find out my ISA 16-bit SB clone (ESS AudioDrive) wosn't recording well enough for VV.

I got my Ensoniq with a rebate program at Office Depot (~$10 after rebate). Especially with their return policy it can't hurt to try...

-- /v\atthew

full duplex kvoicecontrol

[rips]

KVoice can run full-duplex. The problem lies in the OSS-Lite drivers that ship with linux. Try using ALSA instead.

I originally had the same problem. The only problem with ALSA is that with my card (Crystal Audio's CS4232 chipset) binds the sample rate to the same level for both input and output so unless you're sampling and playing back at the same rate, one of them is gonna get a bit screwed.

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[DigitalRonin]

I'm sure I remember hearing about someone doing exactly that (yelling "format cee colon backslash return") just before a demo of some voice recognition software -- wish I could remember whose it was -- anyway, according to the story, it worked! Probably boll*cks, but a good story anwyway.

The PROBLEM with Voice Recognition

[Silex]

I purchased ViaVoice from IBM (for Win32) a while ago. The IDEA behind the technology is a good one. But the problem is, it's not only slower than typing, it's twice as frusturating, and may take up as much as 3x the time it takes to type the same document.

WHY?

(a) Accuracy -- My copy of IBM VoiceType came with a speaker-mic combination head set (made by Andrea). The documentation says that this is ideal for use with VoiceType. So I'm not going to blame my hardware for the inaccuracy of this product. It has trouble recognizing a lot of words. I don't have an accent, so that's not the problem. There are many technical reasons why this happens ... but they don't matter to the enduser.

(b) Method of Speech: You can't just talking into the mic, like you normally talk. You have to pause between EACH word. But you MUST NOT pause or slow down while saying A WORD. This .. is .. a .. very .. unnatural way of speaking. Sometimes you forget to pause, or sometimes you accidently pause between multi-sylable words. This is one of the major causes of errors.

(c) Although this product DOES have support for editing the text through voice, it's quite impracticle. If you want to edit text that has already been typed, or you want to format text in a certain way, you're still going to have to use the keyboard, and possibly the mouse. You will find yourself trying to work with the mouse, keyboard and (now) trying to speak in a very unnatural way to the computer as well. It's not a matter of being HARD to do, it just doesn't make sense. It's easier to just type.


I think this application is not very usefull for typing large documents. What it IS usefull for is giving commands to the system through voice. I'm not sure how IBM plans on integrating this with Linux, because Linux systems vary greatly between eachother (unlike Windows, which has a very centralized control over the system, making it easy to make calls to all kinds of programs without knowing what the program really is). But if they can pull it off ... maybe get it working with xterm or something, that would be great. And if they could get it working with an IRC and/or an ICQ client, that would certainly make life easier for many of us (that it would be kind of like a low-bandwidth alternative to audioconferencing ... especially if you could get the IRC client to 'say' all the text as it scrolls by).

This is a good application, but the whole voicerecognition deal is really over-hyped. I hope IBM plans on porting some REAL software to Linux as well.

Home Version for Win32 Only Supports MSWord

[garygfx]

ViaVoice Executive will allow you to dictate to any Windows application including fields. The Office edition is limited to Word 97 and IBM's SpeakPad WP. However, the Office edition will still let you control menu funtions in other programs by voice, but you can't dictate text. :-( I think I need to upgrade.

Sounds like great fun! :-)

[Fixr]

Is this going to be a medium for the next wave of viruses?

Lost link, not there YET....

[gfolkert]

Seems that internet time, has caught the site with it's pants down. I left a Voice message with Kristin Wahl that the site needs attention. Should get taken care of soon.

As always: