[MV] Re: ViaVoice vs. iListen

[Phil Tanny]

Wow, Joseph thanks for this excellent comparison review.
Really, I appreciate the time you put in to your post, it's
very helpful to me.

I'm especially interested in your use of voice recog for
programming.   That was the real icing on the cake. After
building web sites via html for 7 years I finally bit the
bullet this year and buried my head in the Perl books for a
few months.   It's been a great adventure that I've enjoyed
very much.

However, typing out tons of Perl is not really what my body
wants to be doing right now, and that has really slowed me
down.   Out of necessity I began sketching out my code with
paper and pencil before hand to limit the amount of time I
spent staring at the screen and typing/retyping.   This
think first, code later process actually turned out to be a
great way to work, though that wasn't my original intention.

I'm going to buy one or both of these programs anyway so
I won't ask you to describe exactly how use them to 
generate code.   But if you care to share, I'll
eagerly and gratefully read any followup posts.

A final thought.  It would be interesting if anyone
cared to create their posts using VV or iListen, without
bothering with the corrections.   Surely this should
be one forum where we could all do that without fear of
ridicule.  :-)  

Thanks again to everyone for all this introductory 
information!

Phil




JSenecal at aol.com wrote the following on 6/17/03

>I also have both on both of my machines and have never had problems with 
>them coexisting. I had been using ViaVoice for programming by voice, I've 
>now switched to iListen 1.6 although it will take a long time before I 
>have all my voice macros recreated for the different platform. But which 
>program is better is still a personal choice, if you can afford to get 
>both, you can try both and then use whichever one works better for you. 
>Or use both, each for different types of dictation.
>
>Both programs have quirks and glitches that you'll need to work around. 
>Both have strong points. Here's my comparison of the two programs. Keep 
>in mind that I use dictation for strange things, your experience may be 
>very different.
>
>
>Dictation:
>Both programs can dictate into almost any application.
>
>ViaVoice can only handle correction within it's SpeakPad. Dictating into 
>the SpeakPad works very well. Correction is easy and elegant. You can 
>navigate by voice (including selecting text by voice). Mixing pasted in 
>text with dictated text doesn't confuse the program, nor does jumping 
>around the document editing it.
>
>iListen can handle correction in any document. In order to implement this 
>the program needs to use a more complex correction mechanism. If not used 
>correctly, it's easy to scramble your text (this hasn't been a problem 
>for me). You have limited navigate by voice capabilities, but it includes 
>selecting text by voice, though only from text dictated since the last 
>time changes were committed. Pasted in text or exiting is invisible to 
>iListen. Using the mouse to move the cursor can confuse iListen (it 
>doesn't know the cursor has moved).
>
>
>Voice Macros:
>ViaVoice supports adding words to the vocabulary as well as removing 
>added words. Text macros allow control of spacing before or after the 
>macro and control of capitalization (incl. upper or lower case) of the 
>next word. Commands are limited to AppleScripts that are not program 
>specific, or single keystrokes (like cmd-Q) that can be program specific. 
>ViaVoice includes a separate program to create keystroke commands. It 
>doesn't provide anyway to create AppleScripts (OS X does) Commands are 
>allowed during dictation. New commands require a quit and relaunch to be 
>recognized.
>
>iListen supports adding words to the vocabulary (during correction), but 
>these words can't be seen or removed afterwards. Both Text macros and and 
>commands can be either universal or program specific. Commands are always 
>AppleScripts, but iListen provides scriptable functions to type 
>characters, strings, and select menu items. This gives iListen much more 
>capability for scripting. With the provided helper application, making 
>AppleScripts that do a series of keystrokes is just cut and paste. 
>iListen has both dictation and command modes. Some commands are 
>recognized in either mode. New commands are recognized immediately in 
>command mode, dictation mode commands require a quit and relaunch.
>
>
>Reliability:
>ViaVoice occasionally acts up, refusing to do copy and paste and 
>sometimes even refusing to dictate. A quit and relaunch fixes this 
>problem. Sometimes the problem is more severe, requiring me to switch 
>between voice profiles.
>
>iListen occasionally crashes. When this happens, just relaunch it and 
>continue. MacSpeech is working hard at eliminating crashes, they just 
>haven't got all of them yet. Although it sounds bad, for me this has been 
>a much less frequent problem than ViaVoice acting up.
>
>
>Why did I use ViaVoice:
>My primary use of dictation is for programming, something neither program 
>is designed for. I used ViaVoice because I could easily add words, I 
>could precisely control spacing (with some exceptions), and because it 
>learned my strange word patters very quickly (again with some 
>exceptions). Whenever ViaVoice would make a persistent dictation error, I 
>would launch SpeakPad and do some additional training for that word.
>
>
>Why did I switch to iListen:
>The latest version of iListen also gives me the ability to add words 
>easily, and to precisely control spacing (with no exceptions). In 
>addition the correction mode had gotten more predictable, so that with 
>care I could avoid text scrambling. It doesn't have all the features I 
>could want, but what it does have is sufficient for the job. With the 
>very big plus that I can correct without have to switch to another 
>program for training. Training now occurs as part of my working.
>
>
>Joseph Senecal
>
>P.S. I also still use PowerSecretary. It works very well for data entry 
>(like Quicken).