[MV] Re: ViaVoice vs. iListen

[JSenecal at aol.com]

>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.

In general, programing by voice consists of 3 issues.

1) Dictation software is optimized for English. Accuracy for programming 
will start out very low, though it does get better with time (and 
correction). Plus the strange word ordering for programming may degrade 
it's accuracy for English. This last isn't a problem for me, my 
programming and E-Mail environments are different machines.

2) You need to be able to add words and symbols for jargon, operators, 
and abbreviations. I don't try to add multiword variable or function 
names unless they are very common. With ViaVoice you can use either the 
Macro Editor or the Vocabulary Editor to add words. Use the Vocabulary 
Editor if they are pronounced as they look, otherwise use the Macro 
Editor. With iListen just use the correction feature to add new words. 
For word fragments, I compare the phonetic spelling of the word fragment 
by itself with the phonetic spelling of the entire word. Sometimes a 
iListen guesses a different pronunciation than what you will be using. 
You can always change the phonetics later.

3) You need absolute control of case and spacing. With ViaVoice I do this 
with Text Macros that might type no text (but control spacing and case of 
the words around them). My favorite is "Shift Space" which combines 
"Shift Key" (capitalize next word) with "No Space" (suppress space before 
next word). I also do variant punctuation macros for when I want other 
than the standard English spacing. iListen case and spacing commands 
affect all following text. Here I made several Mode commands to change 
all case and spacing settings with a single command. The ones I use are 
"Normal Mode" (all options off), "Program Mode" (lowercase, no space), 
"Variable Mode" (Capitalize, no space), and "Title Mode" (Capitalize). I 
also use the standard commands. After commit corrections, iListen will 
type the first word with no leading space and capitalized, though you can 
override that with "Space     Begin Lower Case".

Not specific to programming, but for voice control in general, I make 
macros to move the cursor or do selections. Eventually I get this done 
for characters, words, and lines. Generally I'll have commands for 
1,2,3,4,5, and 10 units. I got these numbers from PowerSecretary's built 
in commands, and continue using them because they make sense. I can't 
easily count higher than 5 at a glance. And 10 gives me a generic "a lot" 
command. For ViaVoice this also requires QuicKeys, since ViaVoice can 
only generate a single keystroke. iListen can do these commands directly.

Joe Senecal/Crazy programmer