[MV] DNS on MacBookPro

[vlmaples at bellsouth.net]

Hi, Joe!

I think by most standards I would be considered an advanced user on both platforms.  The problem with iListen is that it does not capitalize my name unless I give that command.  I have both corrected it every single time it is typed, as well as "taught" through documents, especially focusing on one's with our family name in high frequency.  Despite correcting every lowercase occurrence of my last name (Maples), it never appears in the correction window.  I also started a new profile in case there was some corruption in an old one, and that did not improve.  I started another profile when I got my new computer, and it still has the same behavior.  In short, I have never been able to overcome the lowercase appearance of my name, with the exception of telling it to capitalize every occurrence.  Since that is not natural for me, it is easier for me to dictate name intensive communication in NaturallySpeaking which is available to me on the same computer.  Because the correction mechanism for NaturallySpeaking is infinitely easier and more rapid, in addition to being intuitive as you progress through the correction, it is a good option for me.

Much of my dictation is medical in nature, but not from a history of documents that I could feed in for training.  Again, because of that fact, Dragon NaturallySpeaking works better for those instances.  Perhaps for a doctor in practice where his vocabulary is standard and he has an extensive history of documents with his primary unique words, then it would work well.  That just is not my case.

Since I already own both products, it's not competition or a test, but simply a matter of efficiency.  I still use both products, each has its own place.  I have no desire to go back to a full Windows environment with all the software issues, hardware issues, as well as viruses and other malicious offenders that slow them down.  Parallels running Windows XP professional with Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a perfect solution for me for my more complex communication.  Since I am virtually totally dependent on speech recognition due to issues with my hands, it is worth my time to invest in improving my productivity and efficiency.

Thanks for your comments!
Valerie

============================================================
From: Joseph Senecal <JSenecal at aol.com>
Date: 2007/02/19 Mon PM 08:14:05 EST
To: "A place to discuss speech recognition on Macintosh." <macvoice at listserver.themacintoshguy.com>
Subject: Re: [MV] DNS on MacBookPro


On Feb 19, 2007, at 2:39 PM, <vlmaples at bellsouth.net>  
<vlmaples at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I still use iListen in my Mac applications for simple tasks that  
> are repetitive, but the fact that it will not acknowledge my last  
> name correctly nor any of the medical terms I use, it is easier to  
> work in Parallels for lengthy, or medical documents.

Just a note that sometimes you need to use the phonetic editor to get  
iListen to recognize words as you say them. For example, my last  
name. Not being a master of the phonetic alphabet (and being too lazy  
to look it up each time I need it), I just enter words that have the  
sounds I want into the "What I say" panel, create phonemes for that,  
then delete extra phonemes (which are usually easy to spot).
For example, for my name I enter something like "send sick coal",  
create the phonemes ("s e n d s I k k O l"), then remove the extra  
phonemes for everything other than "sen i coal" (s e n I k O l)  
before adding the word.

Most of the time you don't need to do this, but if iListen persists  
in not recognizing a word, it can be worth checking to see what  
phonemes it's expecting for a word using the "What you Say" panel.  
Even if you've already added the word, you can add it again with a  
different phonetic to improve recognition.

Joe Senecal

Valerie

Check out my girls at:
http://www.caringbridge.org/ms/cindymaples
http://www.caringbridge.org/ms/nicholemaples