[Athen] Dragon Dictate & Programming :response from product manager of nuance

[Ed. Rosenthal]

I think David's done a nice job of articulating some of the challenges of
writing/editing code with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, so let me build on his
comments:

 

1. If this person was a 'coder' previously that will be both helpful and
challenging.  Helpful because he knows what needs doing from a code
standpoint, challenging because 'speechifying' the coding environment will
be slower than he'd be used to with pure manual input.  Generally, when I
work with folks who need to use Dragon in support of code writing I
emphasize the concept of an old favorite input" were the use Dragon for the
things it can do well, and use their mouse/keyboard for the things it does
not - this user may or may not be able to do much mouse/keyboard activity -
he/she may also want to consider an adaptive keyboard/mouse combination if
at all viable (have you ever looked at Vivo Mouse?)

2. Dragon Pro has a number of utilities that will be helpful in this regard:

- using the "import a list of words or phrases" on the Vocabulary menu of
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Pro would allow him to construct a list of
commonly used technical term/programming elements - he can then add spoken
form equivalents by either using a switch ( / )

when importing the list or after the fact in the vocabulary editor

- it might be interesting to have it use the "learn from specific documents"
as well where he selects a specific number of pertinent coding documents, or
perhaps point to a coding manual, to see that provides any improvement

3.  Much of the code writing/assembly process involves copying and pasting
an existing line of code into the next line and he should find Dragon very
adept at this.  Keep in mind that he can use concatenated commands like
"select next four characters", "select previous five words", "select line"
and so on and then executed a copy function (or similar) and then use
navigation commands to go to a specified location and perform a paste
function.

4.  Dragon NaturallySpeaking does support spelling by voice and I frequently
use "on the fly" spelling commands; in addition, Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Professional supports spell mode, and he would probably find this to be very
helpful as it would allow him to inject individual characters in a string -
particularly if he learns the international communication alphabet (alpha,
bravo, etc.).

5.  Because the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional application is
scriptable he will be able to write commands to create code that will be
helpful in assembling.

 

There used to be an application called CodeVox which was developed by David
Jeschke; who was a programmer at Microsoft and develop repetitive stress
injury.  I do not know if this product is still available were being
developed, but it did introduce a number of voice commands that would help
code writers in the code assembly process.

 

With all that said however I find that many of the people that want to write
code and manage code using speech recognition technology find it a
frustrating transition.

 

That is probably "too much information", but I hope it is helpful. good
luck!  -ed.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Edward S. Rosenthal

President and CEO

Next Generation Technologies, Inc. (NGT, Inc.)

20006 Cedar Valley Rd. #101

Lynnwood, Wa.  98036

425-744-1100  ext.15

EM: edward at ngtvoice.com

URL: http://www.ngtvoice.com

Skype: ed.rosenthal7

 

 

 

From: athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Kenneth
Elkind
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 11:55 AM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Athen] Dragon Dictate & Programming :response from product manager
of nuance 

 

Sorry about the confusion that may have caused about Dragon
NaturallySpeaking for PC

 

Here's the response from a product manager of nuance about Dragon dictate
for the Mac.

*	Group: Dragon NaturallySpeaking
*	Discussion:
<http://www.linkedin.com/e/-fg54o4-gvy59zvr-65/vaq/84157128/3004295/60811446
/view_disc/?hs=false&tok=3PdDpChPU1zl01> Dragon Dictate & Programming 

Mr. Thomas,
While technically it is possible to use the Dragon Dictate for Mac software
to produce the characters, punctuation marks and symbols one uses to write
code, without a lot of customization, it may not be that practical to do so.
One would have to use Spelling Mode to spell out anything that is not in our
vocabulary and add that word as a custom word. Things like "int" or "std"
come to mind. Another tool for customization would be Text Macros. An
example of a Text Macro is: I speak a voice command like "Standard Greeting"
and Dragon Dictate inserts the text "Ladies and Gentlemen:". Creating custom
Text Macros for frequently used terminology and context for a particular
programming language would be another part of the necessary customization to
make dictating code a truly efficient process.


David Popovitch

Product Manager, Dragon

Nuance Communications, Inc.

 

 

 

Kenneth Elkind

Assistive Technology Specialist

(617) 287- 5243

Kenneth.elkind at umb.edu

Skype User Number: adaptiveumb

 

 

Adaptive Computer Lab

Maximizing Learning Potential

 

Learn about the
<http://www.umb.edu/it/getting_services/computer_labs/adaptive_computer_lab/

> Adaptive Computer Lab


 

 

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