Boston Linux & UNIX was originally founded in 1994 as part of The Boston Computer Society. We meet on the third Wednesday of each month at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Building E51.

Speech Recognition with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and WINE

Date and Time

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm

Location

MIT Building E-51, Room 335

Presenters

Susan Cragin

Summary

A demonstration of installing and running Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Linux using Wine

Abstract

One of the most complex programming tasks has been the development of Continuous Speech Recognition (CSR). Companies started to develop it only when government funding was available, in the early 1990s. When that funding was pulled, the industry shrank and consolidated, and now the only two good CSR engines are closed-source and Windows-centric, and owned and developed by Nuance Communications. And only one of those engines, for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, is still being developed.

But CSR has been shown to be an invaluable resource.

  • It speeds work and lowers costs, particularly in the medical field, which documentation relies on narrative descriptions using complex medical terms. In the legal field, certain documents can be drafted quickly. In building inspection, notes can be made on-site in narrative form.
  • It assists persons who have trouble typing. It also can prevent repetitive strain injuries in the arms and hands.
  • It can be an aid to learning, and fosters creativity. This is something that is only starting to be understood.

Linux needs CSR. Developing its own would take years, but Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 is available now, with blazing speed and accuracy, especially considering the overall sorry state of Linux audio.

Susan Cragin will demonstrate how NaturallySpeaking can be installed using wine, how it works and what it's limitations are, and how it can interact with native Linux programs.

Cragin is a WINE Maintainer of DNS10 Standard.

BLU is a member of BostonUserGroups
BLU is a member of BostonUserGroups
We also thank MIT for the use of their facilities.

Valid HTML 4.01! Valid CSS!



Boston Linux & Unix / webmaster@blu.org