From ns.itep.ru!CERN.ch!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-200.sprintlink.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!castle.nando.net!news Thu Jul 25 19:30:10 1996 Path: ns.itep.ru!CERN.ch!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-200.sprintlink.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!castle.nando.net!news From: Ethan Royael Nicholas Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.beta Subject: Re: Merlin-VTD/N Questions Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 08:55:02 -0400 Organization: Compu-Trak Lines: 79 Message-ID: <31EA3FA6.6CA1@unity.ncsu.edu> References: <4sc88d$ip3@master.ftn.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01Gold (Win95; I) dnagy@ftn.net wrote: > > I've been thinking about how I could use the Voice Dictation/ > Navigation technology that will ship with Merlin and a few > questions come to mind. > > Will a P-83 Overdrive and 32 MB of ram on a VLB motherboard > handle the _voice navigation_ smoothly with no hesitations and still > leave resources for other task(s)? Heheheh. The short answer is no. I have a P90 w/ 40MB RAM and "no hesitation" hardly describes it. It takes about half a second after I issue a command for it to be enacted, and lord knows an overdrive chip won't perform as if it were an 83 MHz Pentium. You will be able to use voice navigation, but you probably won't enjoy the memory crunch, and I doubt dictation will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy. > Will the aforementioned system handle _voice dictation_? Any system will handle voice dictation -- the only issue is whether or not you will be satisfied with its performance. I'm happy with dictation on my system (only after full enrollment, though...) but I still want a PPro 200 ;-). It will work, but you will have to talk nice and slowly. > Given that several people use the same computer, will it be possible > to have more than one user for the voice navigation/dictation? How is > this done? Yep. Voice support has the built-in ability to handle multiple users -- just use different usernames for the various people, and then each of them can train the system to his/her own voice. There is a WPS object for "Speech User"; just double-click on it and Voice Manager is launched with the settings for the appropriate person. > How does the voice navigation/dictation handle different user accents? > My wife speaks excellent English but with a pronounced French accent. > Will this be a problem for the voice software? She will need to train the system to her voice. The first time I used VoiceType, navigation was acceptably accurate (meaning it got me to say "Neat!", but I wouldn't want to use it day-in-day-out) and dictation was a complete and total joke. Blue car up tree go underdeveloped national tax communism Bethesda for to me? (Just laugh into the microphone -- seriously -- and you will be rolling on the floor with the stuff it comes up with). After the 50-sentence training, it could occasionally get a sentence or two right at a stretch; what would usually happens is that you get a sentence that looks pretty much normal but starts talking about police officers biting poodles around the middle. After the full enrollment (ARGHHH!) it works almost perfectly (no problem to do a few paragraphs with only one or two minor mistakes such as using the wrong form of a word or leaving off an "s" or something silly like that). I suspect that after that much training (ARGHHH!) your wife's accent won't give the system any trouble at all. Of course, after using VTD _very_ heavily for the past few weeks, I have to say that VoiceType's increase in accuracy is also due to the fact that I speak to it better than I did before. After using it for a while you get very good at pausing the correct length of time between words (annoying at first) and speaking at the right speed (go too fast and the system gets mad at you); the upshot of this is that I can now get decent results on a totally untrained system simply because I have trained myself to dictate properly. Of course, I still get a few cars driving up trees unless I'm using a trained system ;-). > Does anyone know if the VTD/N is available in languages other > than English? Is it available in French? (Extra $$$?) It is supposed to be available in French immediately upon GA. All you should have to do is buy the French language version of Merlin. > Thanks for your time and responses. > Dan Ethan Royael Nicholas ernichol@unity.ncsu.edu Compu-Trak, Inc. http://www.compu-trak.com