Xref: utzoo comp.windows.misc:990 comp.sys.next:1237 comp.sys.mac:25035 comp.cog-eng:873 comp.sys.ibm.pc:23149 sci.lang:3910
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!wald-david
From: wald-david@CS.YALE.EDU (david wald)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac,comp.cog-eng,comp.sys.ibm.pc,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are there no Speech Recognition products for the Mac??
Keywords: Voice Recognition, Voice Synthesis, Speech, Voice Response
Message-ID: <47365@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 89 16:26:32 GMT
References: <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <2209@uokmax.UUCP>
Sender: root@yale.UUCP
Reply-To: wald-david@CS.YALE.EDU (david wald)
Followup-To: comp.cog-eng
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT  06520-2158
Lines: 43

In article <2209@uokmax.UUCP> srpenndo@uokmax.UUCP (Sean Richard
Penndorf) writes:
>In article <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> pam@uhccux.UUCP (.) writes:
>>In article <6890> pardo@cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) writes:
>>>>>>Good speech recognition hardware can't be more than 5 or 10
>>>>>>years away, can it?
>>>>>>-Peter Schachte
>>-- It's here! -- But how come there are no Speech Recognition boards for the
>>Macintosh?  There are plenty for IBM PC's. Both Speaker Dependent (you have to
>>teach them your voice first) and Speaker Independent (they'll recognize
>>anybody's voice, but only recognize a limited vocabulary of words)
>
[discussion of up'n'coming Mac speech recognition AI.]
>
>Imagine...Microsoft Word on the Mac where you do not to use a keyboard or a
>mouse.  Now that's Mac user friendly interface!

Not for me.  I've never understood people who can vocally dictate a
substantial document.  My writing style is just not linear.  Part of
this is a cut-and-paste style, in which sentences and paragraphs get
written first and then put into the proper place, and part is the fact
that I'm rarely writing just a single paragraph at a time.

I suppose it might work if I had the mouse available to move around, and
the speech recognition was only used to insert text, but I can't think
of a convenient way to move the insertion point using only speech.
Besides, for anything except text insertion, you have to have some way
of informing the computer that what you are saying is a direction,
rather than more text.  What's the speech equivalent of a nonprinting
character?  (It is *not* an unprintable word.)

Now, speech recognition plus eye tracking.  Maybe.

Now, can we put this discussion in a single newsgroup, please?
Followups to comp.cog-eng.

-David

============================================================================
David Wald                                              wald-david@yale.UUCP
waldave@yalevm.bitnet                                 wald-david@cs.yale.edu
"A monk, a clone and a ferengi decide to go bowling together..."
============================================================================