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| Thread ID: 21546 | 2002-06-28 10:21:00 | Finding a program | tones_malones (611) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 58046 | 2002-06-29 02:20:00 | IBM were confident enough to include a microphone in the box with OS/2 Warp 4. I don't think it worked that well. Unfortunately, it didn't sell all that well either. :-( There is a Dilbert cartoon, in which one of his workmates was *loudly* using the speech controlled computer in his cubicle. Dilbert is annoyed and when the geek is boasting about it, says something to the effect: "What happens when I say [b] DELETE ALL FILES [b]?". ]:) :D |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 58047 | 2002-06-29 07:02:00 | I'm interested in the comments about speech recognition as it's a hot topic in the family at the moment. Dad is going blind and is now legally recognised as such. Some time ago I installed a program on his computer which can read things to him but he is now thinking speech recognition may be the next step. He is a DOS user from way back, hates Windows and is a one fingered typist. He is a New Zealander who speaks clear English. His vision is patchy - can sort of see round the black spots with a magnifying glass which makes for slow reading and bad typing. Vision is still detereorating. I did suggest he dictates to Mum and she types. Problem there is that my mother is very deaf. Family are scattered round the world so computers keep everyone in touch through email. Different timezones make mics a non-solution. The questions are: How much vision is needed to set the program up? How much vision is required to edit mistakes? How much time, effort and energy is required? I have a sneaking suspicion it may require hardware upgrades so it could be a painfully expensive exercise if it doesn't work. Is it worth it? |
Heather P (163) | ||
| 58048 | 2002-06-29 09:37:00 | Hi Heather P I read your Post keenly. I would love to be able to "Bark" at my m/c & have it do what I want it to. Seriously tho folks, how far away is an Odessy HAL speech recognition programme. There are computer companies who are very busy developing such programmes & have done reasonably well so far, but..... I believe MS is not doing so in it's own right but is encouraging & supporting developer people, is that so? The two types of speech programme, I think. are TTS Text to Speech where the computer speaks the words from the screen; & STT Speech to Text where we speak into the microphone & the Text appears on screen. TTS is relatively simple ( A Newbie opinion) whilst STT is difficult because it only works well with a lot, that is a lot, of training the the programme. The more training the better. The other thing I found was you had to speak to it in a "Monotone Voice) rather than a "Normally Expressive Voice" (does that make sense?) When you use a TTS programme the Voice is "Flat" & not expressive, robotic almost. Some give you a choice of accents as in US or UK English. Another thing I wondered about. If I train my M/C in Yorkshire accented English , could someone with a different accent use it? I hope this discussion goes on & maybe it should become an "Official Hot Topic", it is the coming thing isn't it. I would love to hear the Experts opinions, I am more than happy to be corrected, how else does one learn? Poppa John (Phew I"m out of breath!!) ;-) |
Poppa John (284) | ||
| 58049 | 2002-06-29 09:45:00 | PS to above, on my XP is a programme called "Narrator". With this I can "magnify" the screen text & have the screen words "spoken" to me. In the wrong accent unfortunately, but beggars can't be choosers. I don't know if Narrator is on any other versions of MS Windows. Is this of any help to you Heather? Poppa John :x | Poppa John (284) | ||
| 58050 | 2002-06-29 09:52:00 | The text to speech program was ATTS. Not too bad all in all and pretty good on inflections. We had to train the family to delete the original message when they replied. Listening to "forward arrow" on every line of a message Dad had originally sent them was a tad annoying! I got bored with the program after a couple of days (after all, I can SEE the screen!) and removed it from my task bar, but Dad finds it reasonably handy on his machine. The one highly irritating bug it has is trying to dial up the internet on activation to look for a later version of itself. He'd use it more if it wasn't for that. Not having a compelling reason to try out speech to text I haven't tried it. Sounds a bit too much like hard work really. Dad, however, has a good reason for it. If it works. He lives 40 minutes away so a week helping to install it isn't an option. |
Heather P (163) | ||
| 58051 | 2002-06-29 10:12:00 | Heather, Re your Paras 4&5. I sympathise with you. I have 32% deafness & two hearing aids. Also specs for short & for long distance. I was looking to my near future needs, trying some of these things out for when I might need them. Setting one of the programmes up doesn't take that long, but I found it a little complicated (my age my age!). I still wonder tho, is the person who gives it the speech training the only one who can use it? No point in you training it if your Dad 's voice is not recognised. eh. ?:| Poppa John Which Ak suburb are you in? I am in the "Best" one Papatoetoe ]:) Poppa John |
Poppa John (284) | ||
| 58052 | 2002-06-29 10:32:00 | I live in them thar hills - over in the West. Dad is in Orakei. No, he would train it. But I have been known to set up duplicate software over here so I can step him through it. eg To find winzip load the x month of PCWorld, half way down the page is a link... yes there are 2 OK buttons but the top one is the top window, click that first... Screens are big places with lots of hidey holes to lose things in. |
Heather P (163) | ||
| 58053 | 2002-06-30 04:23:00 | A problem which has been commented on in various places, is that a Web page set up with "text only" option is much more suited to text-to-speech. Such pages used to be common --- many people used Lynx (a very good text only browser, which would give good performance with 4800 bps connections). There are not many sites which give that option, now. Nowdays, there is a tendency to assume: " I have a 24" TFT screen, and 20Gb of memory and 6 2.4GHz processors, and a fibreoptic network connection, and so has everyone out there. I can use all the bellsa and whistles. They should upgrade if they can't use MY web pages". At the simplest level: Dick Smith Electronics put out a CD version of their catalogue. It can't be used without installing a "late" version of IE. It's a bloody catalogue. I want text information from it, basically. Why should I have to put a huge package on my disk when I won't use it for anything else? |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 58054 | 2002-06-30 08:09:00 | The person going to use it has to train it but you can have several people use it with their own profiles. You don't have to talk in a monotone and if you have a fast enough PC you can talk at a normal speed. You do have to speak clearly and with the mic in the proper position and you don't want too much background noise. |
mikebartnz (21) | ||
| 58055 | 2002-06-30 08:33:00 | mikebartnz I hear what you are saying, my own experience suggests different. OK it is only a $25 head mic, I tried various positions & settings with it etc. However I hope I can get a quality set up one day. Perhaps we should agree to disagree? Poppa John ?:| | Poppa John (284) | ||
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