Voice-to-Text Options for Unix?

fingerLess asks: "I recently got pushed over the edge in keyboard use. I use Linux and wanted to find a good voice-to-text solution I can use on Linux on my laptop. It seems the IBM ViaVoice I found was still at 1.0 and there was even some questions if it was still available. But if it isn't being worked on, is it worth it? Has anyone tried any voice products running on top of one of the win-virtual machines and had had any success? My experience with those indicate top much of a performance hit in the AV department (AV seems not to be a real high priority with such products aimed at business or 'Office' productivity). Ideas?" For a while there, it looked like speech recognition was progressing at a pretty good clip, especially with Big Blue leading the charge. However I haven't heard of anything revolutionary happening with this technology for the past 2 years. Did I miss something, or has voice recognition on the desktop lagged.

Re:ViaVoice still at 1.0 on linuux

[Stone Rhino]

This is not meant as a troll. I am merely stating what has already been put across many times on here at a place where it is relevant. IBM, for all its claims about supporting linux, still holds fast to windows on its desktops for business. I believe that its commitment to linux is limited to the server market, which is why they do not put out linux versions of much of their desktop software, i.e. ViaVoice.

Not sure

[__past__]

Try to have a look at Emacspeak [sourceforge.net]. Perhaps that's what you want.

Re:Not sure

[Phork]

no, that would be completely wrong. enacspeak is for output, not input.

There is no Voice Recognition for Linux

[Sam Lowry]

There is a large vocabulary recogniton system, CMU Sphynx at http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/sphinx/

However, This is probably not exactly what you are looking for as is not (yet?) suitable for Voice Recognition tasks.

The problem with Voice Recognition is that it has always been a toy for most users and very few of those who buy Voice Recognition software do succeed to make a productivity boost. If you are one of them, you are a lucky guy as you have a good, distinguishable pronunciation, you work in a silent environment and use the mike shipped with the software. Since Unix world has a very practical view on things, I doubt there is many unix people out there that think Voice Recognition can be of use to them.

Given the laziness of users and lack of training facilities, Voice Recognition is considered to stay an unprofitable buisiness for a long time. You can't even imagine how expensive it is to write a Voice Recognition software and collect the speech data for it...

IBM ViaVoice X

[helixblue]

The title said UNIX, and then later he said he was using Linux, so this may not be as applicable as he wanted.

This morning I saw a review on IBM ViaVoice for MacOS X [applelinks.com] that piqued my interest. Overall, it looks like a pretty solid product for doing voice input into any program.. but can you imagine using vi without a keyboard?

As a recent MacOS X convert -- it's good to have a UNIX with supported commercial apps.

Re:IBM ViaVoice X

[/dev/trash]

That's just Cliff doing his editing. I once submitted a story ( that got accepted) that asked if there was GPS for Linux. It was posted as "Is there GPS for Unix?"

Specialized Vocabulary...

[NOT-2-QUICK]

In my view, one the primary obstacles that has yet to be overcome in the wonderful world of voice recognition (regardless of OS) is the specialized vocabulary that is required by the recognition software. By this, I am specifically referring the word syntax that the interface requires to achieve optimum performance.

While we have all seen the world quite capably adapt to the Palm-Graffiti style of hand writing recognition, many vendors have found it to be a much more formidable task to modify the manner in which people speak. Beyond the several language variations (languages, accents, lisps, etc...), developers must also take into consideration much more subtle disparities in speech such as separate dialects within a given language. This has caused quite an immense dilemma, one that has prevented the mainstreaming of such technology!!!

Even in the case of software such as Via Voice, the user is still given to the quite arduous task of creating a "dictionary" of sorts that recognizes their specific speech patterns and verbiage tendencies.

All of these factors lead to complications and idiosyncrasies that the average Joe User is unwilling or unable to accept!!!

Re:Specialized Vocabulary...

[mdaniel]

I have followed Lojban [lojban.org] for quite some time now and I think that it, or something like it, represents the future of human-computer voice interaction. It is parseable and phonetically spelled, making it very computer friendly.

This does not beat the problem you brought up about Joe User, but for someone whose profession depends upon interaction with computers, learning a new way of typing (dvorak), writing (Graffiti) or speaking (Lojban) is a small price to pay. It even lends itself more toward the model of Shadowrunish futures where computer professionals are almost a separate race. :-)

No good free solutions...

[RadioheadKid]

This stuff is pretty complex, and I doubt you will find anything that good for free...

Mandrake

[leviramsey]

I seem to remember that commercial versions of Mandrake up to 8.0 had IBM ViaVoice... I haven't bought a full commercial edition of 8.1, so I don't know if they still do that, though.

another speech package

[jiminim]

ISIP [msstate.edu] has a pretty good speech to text system that should work on most Linux/Unix boxes.

Takes a little intelligence to set up though.