Copyright © 1997 by Michael F. Kamprath

Speech Typer is a new and innovative use of Apple’s Speech Recognition technology. Up to now, Apple’s Speech Recognition technology has been used just to make commands. While this has been useful, it does very little to help users to get data into their computer. Speech Typer has been written to solve that problem by typing any predefined phrase into any application you may be using. While Speech Typer does not make your Mac a full fledged dictation machine, it does allow you to “type” commonly used words and phrases just by saying them.

Requirements

Speech Typer is a Power PC only application and requires the Speech Recognition Manager extension v1.5 or later. You may download the current version of the Speech Recognition Manager from Apple's web page at http://speech.apple.com/ptk/. 

Description

Speech Typer comes in two parts: a background only application (the Engine) and an application (the Controller). The Engine is the part of Speech Typer that actually does the work of recognizing phrases and typing them out in your current application. The Controller is used to edit the phrase file and to adjust various preferences. 

 
             The Speech Typer Engine

The Engine can be launched one of a two ways: launching it from the Finder by double clicking its icon, or launching it from the Controller by pressing the “Start Engine” button. Once launched, the Engine will continuously monitor for any listen phrase that is in the Speech Typer phrase file. When the Engine hears a phrase, it will then type the response phrase associated with the listen phrase. 

In addition to the phrases in the phrase file, the Engine recognizes three commands that directly control its behavior. They are:

     Turn off Speech Typer: This command deactivates the Engine’s recognition algorithms without actually quitting the Engine. This is useful if you plan to say things in the phrase file that you do not want the Engine to react to but you do not what to quit the engine.

     Activate Speech Typer: This command turns the Engine’s recognition algorithms back on after the command above has been issued.

     Quit the Speech Typer Engine: This command actually quits the Engine’s background only application. This also terminates all Speech Typer speech recognition activities.

 
             The Speech Typer Controller

While this application’s icon looks like a control panel, it is really just an application. You use this application to edit the Engine’s phrase file. When you launch this application, it will open the phrase file and present you with the list of phrases. The controller's window will look like this:

 
































To edit a phrase, select it in the list and then double click it. A dialog will appear in which you can edit the Listen Phrase and the Response Phrase. The Listen Phrase is the actual phrase the Engine will listen for. When the Engine hears it, it will then type the Response Phrase. Since these two phrases do not have to be the same, you can set up Speech Typer to type complicated or long phrases by saying a simple phrase.

There are four buttons at the tope of the Controller’s window. They are:

     Save Phrase File: Click this button to save any changes to the phrase file. Changes are not usable by the Engine until the phrase file is saved.

     Create New Phrase: Click this button to add a new phrase to the phrase file.

     Start/Quit Engine: Click this button to either launch the Engine if it is not running, or to quit the Engine if it is running.

     Engine Preferences: Click this button to display the preference dialog for the Engine. There are three possible preferences you may set. The first is "Speak Response Phrase." When this item is checked, Speech Typer will speak the response phrase and type it in the Speech Recognition control window. If it is unchecked, Speech Typer will just type the response phrase in the control window. The second preference is "Always type a return after each phrase." This causes Speech Typer to always type a return after typing each response phrase. Finally, "Notify when engine is quitting" will cause the engine to speak a notification to indicate that it is quitting. 

Editing Phrases

When you double click an existing phrase in the controller or create a new phrase, the Edit Phrase dialog will appear. It look like this:

 

















Enter into the Listen Phrase edit box the phrase for which you want Speech Typer to listen. When Speech Typer hears this phrase, it will these type the phrase that is in the Response Phrase edit box. You may insert special control characters into the Response Phrase by using the pop-up menu to its right. This menu allows you to insert a return, tab, backspace, or escape character. Each character will be represented by its standard ANSI representation, which are as follows:

           Character               Representation        
            Return                  ^M
            Tab                     ^I
            Escape                  ^[
            Backspace               ^H

Alternatively, you may type the representations of each of these special characters yourself.