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Dragon NaturallySpeaking v10 W2K Xywrite
- Subject: Dragon NaturallySpeaking v10 W2K Xywrite
- From: flash flash@xxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:00:15 +0100
Y'all,
Here's an update on using speech-to-text with our favorite word
processing program. Dragon uses up as much RAM as there is, and they
recommend a minimum of one GB. I first tried using it with 750 MB, and
found that it ran slowly. It is now running more happily with two GB. It
will merrily dictate text into XyWrite, although some supplementary
features are not available in Dragon to XyWrite; for example some voice
commands. It works well with T'bird e-mail program, and can even
transfer text to programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop by
means of a separate transfer pad. The headset which delivered with the
standard version is pretty uncomfortable but the program will work with
almost any headset or halfway decent microphone. If you don't need to
hear playback then of course a microphone without earphones will be
adequate. The program is trainable, and you can manually edit the
dictionary. Getting it to work is straightforward: you start the
program, activate the microphone, and then start any other program into
which you would like to dictate text: simply set the cursor where you
want the text to begin, and start talking. The text just flows right
into your destination program, be it XyWrite or e-mail or whatever. You
can make corrections on the fly or later on, as you wish. This e-mail
for example was entirely dictated using Dragon. It does however make a
few mistakes. For example, when I say obscured it writes up skewered, or
at any rate it did until I trained it assiduously. Yes, it recognized
the final word in the previous sentence; I did not have to correct that.
It confuses homonyms: profit and prophet, to, two and too, etc. (this
sentence I had to correct manually) [Note to Auerbach: now here's a good
example of a self-referential sentence]. I will find it very useful for
translating from German to English on-the-fly, and for quoting long
passages of text (my flatbed scanner does not have an OCR function). I
have not yet figured out how to format spoken text bold or italic in
XyWrite, but maybe Harry has figured this out for us already.
Cheers,