Re: IBM just announced speech recognition: was (Re: gnome and handicapped access..)

[Jochem Huhmann <joh unidui uni-duisburg de>]

On Tue, 27 Apr 1999 00:51:35 PDT Xun Cheng wrote:

> yes, I have tried it. Good enough for issuing commands without
> parameters. I can use it to open an xterm, start emacs etc.
> 
> A real powerful speech recognition should be able to
> write essays through microphone.

Well, recognition of spoken voice is one problem. All the AI stuff to
provide a comfortable workplace with a voice interface is another
problem. How to *edit* such a text via voice commands? How to
distinguish data (text) from commands (editing)? There is a need for a
lot of AI (or at least lots of heuristic) to make that possible in a
"natural" and effective way. That might be solvable with an open-source
approach, since it needs much brainstorming, a lot of testing and many
good ideas. And it's fun, IMHO ;-)

I know that IBM has done a lot of work with this, but AFAIK this is all
tied to a GUI. I would like to see voice recognition replacing the GUI
as far as possible. Using this as just another way to access a
applications menu instead of mouse and keyboard is the wrong way, IMHO.
Windows does not have any other Interface as a GUI, but Unix has a
strong tradition in text-based interfaces. Give me a "speech-terminal"
and a natural language shell and a dream would become true. Imagine you
could hack without even leaving the bed ;-)


	Jochem



-- 
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Jochem Huhmann  *  Duisburg, Germany  *  joh@uni-duisburg.de
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"Microsoft NT is not computer science. It is computer scientology."