Using nonstandard programs

Is there any way, perhaps a registry alteration, to get Windows speech recognition to function with nonstandard programs? For example dragon naturally speaking will basically type into most anything that the keyboard will. Unfortunately windows is a lot more fussy. Outside of that, it appears a less buggy program. Dragon works fine, when it works. Unfortunately it's got so many bugs that it's convinced me that there is in fact a devil, and this program is his work.

bipolarbear wrote: Is there any way, perhaps a registry alteration, to get Windows speech recognition to function with nonstandard programs? For example dragon naturally speaking will basically type into most anything that the keyboard will. Unfortunately windows is a lot more fussy. Outside of that, it appears a less buggy program. Dragon works fine, when it works. Unfortunately it's got so many bugs that it's convinced me that there is in fact a devil, and this program is his work.

The first course of action if you are on Vista is to right click the microphone icon on the Speech Bar.  Select Options and then Enable dictaton everywhere. If this does not work you can use the Open Dictation Box macro which allows you to dictate to Wordpad and then transfer text to the place the cursor was when you opened the macro when you say Post Dictation. I tried posting the macro but our security is not allowing it due to the unique characters within the macro.

 

1. You have many programs open and resources become choked. Close some programs if possible. Check Task Manager Processes and Performance tabs the next time it occurs.
2. You unknowingly lose focus on the window you are dictating into. Just try clicking back into the window and see if that cures the problem. This happens to me when working on one of my notebook computers when window focus is accidentally changed  by touching the Touchpad and the cursor is drawn to another window.
3. Your audio can be changed automatically by Windows. This has occured due to a recent Windows update we suspect. We cannot track down the exact cause but many people have had recognition problems. See the thread in this forum, "Problem with move and home commands being issued."

Marty Markoe, eMicrophones, Inc.

bipolarbear wrote: I know it's not the audio being changed because recognition does realize some command is being sent, it just doesn't recognize anything. No matter what you say it responds with "what was that?"

bipolarbear wrote: Yes, my Sennheiser M.D. 431 has an on-off switch (it's a powered microphone), and I routinely shut it when not in use to conserve battery power.

bipolarbear wrote: I'm using windows seven. I have noted that windows recognition has a memory leak. If you don't send the program to sleep immediately after finishing your dictation, resource use will continue to grow indefinitely. I've already seen it approaching 600,000.

I was really curious about this. Starting about 12 hours ago on my Windows 7 notebook computer with 2 GB RAM I started monitoring memory usage for sapisvr.exe.

bipolarbear wrote: Interesting. When I 1st open it, that process is using less than 30,000 kb. Occasionally as low as 17,000 upon 1st opening. Even with putting it to sleep and shutting the microphone immediately upon finishing dictation, it will still grow over 100,000 within an hour.   The only other non-system processes running are the aforementioned third-party instant messenger, browser and e-mail. The e-mail can be eliminated because I have seen the behavior without that program open. That leaves the browser and instant messenger. Going to be difficult to test without them as I rely upon them for work. But I'll give it a try this evening. Thanks Martin.

Yes, likely the Browser or Instant Messenger. The other possibility, I am using 32 bit Windows 7. Are you using 64 bit?

I don't think that's it. I just shut both programs and then opened WRS. Started out at 29,900 and change, and within 3 minutes grew to 32,000 and change, in a sleeping state. In a listening state it continued to grow, pausing every few seconds in its growth, then growing again. It's not the end of the world, it takes quite a while before it gets up to the resource use of dragon version 10. That's continually over 300,000, usually around 350,000.

bipolarbear wrote: A little more information on the original issue I posted in this thread; if the scratchpad is unchecked/disabled, WR S will type directly into my third party instant messenger, however, you cannot make corrections using the program at all.

bipolarbear wrote: Yes, with the scratchpad corrections function normally. You just have to say insert and enter after every thing you say. Something else I've noticed, on this forum, new paragraph does not give you the start of a new paragraph. It functions the way new line should function. You'll note there is no space between the second and third sentences, yet I'd told it to start a new paragraph. Just odd little things. I'm currently switching back and forth between WRS and dragon. When one frustrates me to the point of exploding, I switch to the other.

One very noteworthy and fascinating advantage that WR has over dragon, you can manually move the cursor with your mouse, even take focus away from the text area or even the window itself, and when you return, WR can still select any word in the document, whereas dragon completely loses its bearings with the slightest provocation.

It was getting very close to 700,000 when I finally shut it down. Computer was getting a little sluggish, compared to usual.

I do, but all that does is slow it down. I had it open from early morning until I made that post. It took that long for it to grow to that level, using it intermittently during the day, and immediately shutting the moment I finish dictation. I figured something else out also. It's not how long the programs I dictate into are open, regarding the other problem I mentioned, where it stops recognizing anything. It's about not having them all open for a long time prior to starting the speech recognition. It worked all day long today, so long as I don't shut WSR and then reopen. If I do that without doing the same with the programs I dictate into, if won't recognize a single thing regarding dictation. Other commands will still function.

Well unfortunately it's necessary for work. There's only three programs open in addition to WSR; my browser, my e-mail, and im program. But it worked fine all day today (except for the memory leak) until I shut WSR and reopened it. The moment I did that, I had to close and reopen the three aforementioned programs as well. When I do that, all is right again. For some reason it just doesn't like it when the programs are open a long time before WSR. How long exactly, I don't know. I haven't tested that explicitly yet.