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From: pds@quintus.uucp (Peter Schachte)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.cog-eng,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Why are there no Speech Recognition products for the Mac??
Keywords: Voice Recognition, Voice Synthesis, Speech, Voice Response
Message-ID: <932@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jan 89 23:05:02 GMT
References: <2972@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <1029@ditsyda.oz> <434@eutrc3.UUCP> <927@quintus.UUCP> <912@scubed.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 36

In article <912@scubed.UUCP> warner@s3snorkel.UUCP (Ken Warner) writes:
>>a combination of mouse and speech recognition (point somewhere and say
>>"insert 'point somewhere and say'," and the phrase appears).  Or how
>>about pointing with the mouse and saying "move this...," then moving
>>the mouse and saying "here."
>
>How would you enter the above paragraph?  
[ using speech and a mouse, and no keyboard ]

Maybe I wouldn't have; maybe I would have phrased it differently.

But suppose I DID want to enter it just like this.  I can think of three
ways to do it.  The first is the best:  a REALLY good AI interface that
tries to figure out the punctuation and emphasis you meant.  Even if it
wasn't perfect, it could probably figure out at least the periods and
commas, at least most of the time.

If that isn't possible, or if it doesn't work perfectly, I could just
say the words, and then go back and put in the punctuation.  I could
select a quotation and say "quote this."  A good voice-operated word
processor would know that periods and commas (usually) go inside quotes,
but colons (usually) go outside, and other such trivia.  It should also
know that when you put a quotation inside another quotation, you use
single quotes for the inner quotation.  So I could have done the nested
quotations with two commands and two mouse selections.  The parenthesis
would be similar.  It really wouldn't be so hard.  I still believe I
could have spoken that paragraph more quickly than I typed it, even if
I had to go back and correct punctuation.  And I wouldn't have had to
worry about spelling.

Maybe it wouldn't be as useful as I think.  I suspect it would be more
useful than you think.  But the only way to find out is to TRY such a
thing.
-Peter Schachte
pds@quintus.uucp
..!sun!quintus!pds