We are pleased to provide you with version 1.5 of the Apple's new Speech Recognition Manager. Version 1.5 of the Speech Recognition extension embodies the first officially supported developer release of the Speech Recognition Manager.
Developers can license, at no cost, version 1.5 of the Speech Recognition extension and version 1.4.1 of the Speech control panel (which lets users configure speech synthesis and speech recognition preferences on their Mac). To find out how, call or write Apple's software licensing group at:
512-919-2645
AppleLink: SW.LICENSE
Internet: SW.LICENSE@applelink.apple.com
Developers can also license Apple's text-to-speech software, to create and ship applications that talk and listen! Note, when licensing software, check to make sure you are licensing the latest version available and check the current license fees and policies, because they do change once in a while. The version numbers listed above are current as of 4/24/96.
The documentation included with this note, "Speech Recognition Manager" in the "SR 1.5 Documentation" folder, is an Adobe Acrobat file. The documentation describes version 1.5 of the Speech Recognition extension and the API and toolbox it embodies. (Version 1.5 contains many features that were not available in version 1.4.1 or earlier versions of the extension.)
Input from early adopters of Apple's speech recognition technology has greatly improved the Speech Recognition Manager API. If you find bugs in the extension or documentation, please use the Apple Bug Reporter stack. Include the version information in the problem description and send to:
Internet: apple.bugs@applelink.apple.com
AppleLink: APPLE.BUGS
Among the new features in version 1.5 of the Speech Recognition Manager:
• Routines for saving and loading language models to and from files or handles (which can be stored as resources).
• The ability for your application to easily request the use of Apple's standard speech recognition feedback window (which lets speakers know when they can talk, and what was recognized) and listening methods (like the push-to-talk feature that enables users to leave the recognizer on all the time without worrying about misfires). These features are critical to successful use of speech recognition, and they are now available to your application with essentially one line of code. Users benefit from standard feedback and listening-method behaviors for most speech recognition applications -- behaviour the user can customize using the Speech control panel that comes with System 7.5 Update 2.0 and in Apple's PlainTalk 1.4.1 software, which is available on Apple's ftp and web sites (location given below) and on most new Macintosh computers. (Developers can license the Speech control panel along with version 1.5 of the Speech Recognition extension, at no cost, for distribution with their applications.)
• SRIdle () call that can be used by applications that do a lot of processing without calling WaitNextEvent regularly. Most applications do not need to call SRIdle (), but applications like fast-action games that rarely call WaitNextEvent and do a lot of processing (and that use the Speech Recognition manager) should call SRIdle () often so the recognizer gets a chance to process sound and send results.
• Ability to have the recognizer recognize from a 16bit/22.050kHz AIFF sound file -- useful during development, to create reproducible test cases.
See the "Speech Recognition Manager" documentation for more details on these and other features.
The Speech Recognition extension runs on Power Macintosh computers with 16-bit sound in running System 7.5 or later. (Version 1.5 of the Speech Recognition extension even runs on the new PowerBook 5300s!) You will need a PlainTalk microphone or microphone of similar quality. The older omnidirectional microphones that were once provided with Macintosh computers will not work.
To use the new (1.5) version of the Speech Recognition extension, you might want to first install version 1.4.1 of English Text-to-Speech (to enable speech synthesis using the new SRSpeak... routines) and English Speech Recognition (to get the Speech control panel), which are two of the components of PlainTalk 1.4.1. You can find PlainTalk 1.4.1 on Apple's Internet, AOL, CompuServe, and AppleLink tech-support sites, in areas related to U.S. Macintosh System Software updates. For example, on the Internet, look at ftp site:
ftp.info.apple.com
on the following directory path:
[Apple Support Area] [ Apple Software Updates] [ US] [ Macintosh] [System]
Then you just need to drag version 1.5 of the Speech Recognition extension to your extensions folder -- replacing version 1.4.1 of the extension -- and reboot.
The sample code provided with this note is a good place to look first for simple examples of how you can use the Speech Recognition Manager. The "Tiny SR Example" is a particularly simple, and complete, example.
