A MUST READ ... L&H Flattens the competition in VR software.
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July 6, 1998
Get Voice Xpress and put NaturallySpeaking and ViaVoice out to pasture
Continuous-speech voice recognition and control is finally coming of age, thanks almost entirely to Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) Speech Products. L&H Voice Xpress Plus is the first word processing companion product I've seen that really delivers a level of dictation and control that's suitable for the average technology-challenged computer user.
I came to this conclusion while playing with three different word processing-voice dictation bundles -- Lotus Word Pro with IBM ViaVoice, Corel WordPerfect with Dragon Systems' Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and Microsoft Word with L&H Voice Xpress Plus.
Let me put it this way. If this was a horse race, Microsoft Word with Voice Xpress Plus would be halfway across the finish line, WordPerfect with NaturallySpeaking would be halfway around the track, and Word Pro with ViaVoice would be halfway to the local firearms store. (They shoot horses, don't they?)
To understand why there is such a huge difference between these three bundles, you have to ask yourself, "What is the point of voice dictation and control?" Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick understood the point many years ago. The point is that Dave Bowman should be able to say "Open the pod bay doors please, Hal." What Dave Bowman should never have to say is "Stop dictation. Switch to flight pod. File. Open. Bay doors. Enter."
The write stuff
It's easy to see who has a real grasp of the natural language concept and who doesn't. Look at how the products compare when trying to accomplish the following simple word processing tasks: Title a page "It was a dark and stormy night." Bold, center, and change the size of that sentence's font. Then correct a word in the third paragraph. Add the sentence "The end." to the end of the document. Insert a four-by-five table near the top. Add a row to the table and then delete a column.
In Lotus Word Pro with ViaVoice, you would say: "Begin dictation. It was a dark and stormy night. Period. The end. Period. End dictation." Then you do the rest manually. You can't do much more than dictate with the Word Pro-ViaVoice bundle. Blam. Exit one formerly lame horse.
In Corel WordPerfect with NaturallySpeaking, you'd say "It was a dark and stormy night. Period. Select previous seven words. Bold that. Center that. Set size 13. Cut that. Go to top. Paste that. Move down two paragraphs. Move forward 5 words. Select next word. Correct that. [Type in "Joe" and press enter.] Go to bottom. The end. Period. Go to top. Move down one paragraph. New line." That's about it. There are no built-in methods to create and modify a table by voice.
Now take Microsoft Word with L&H Voice Xpress Plus: "It was a dark and stormy night. Period. Select last sentence. Make it bold. Center it. Make it bigger. Move it to the beginning of the document. Go to the third paragraph. Select fifth word. Correct it. Capital-J-o-e. Done. Go to the end of the document. The end. Period. Go to the second paragraph. Next line. Add a four-by-five table. Add a row. Delete this column."
Granted, it's not quite as natural as "Open the pod bay doors please, Hal." But it's an excellent start.
And as similar as the above examples may seem, there is a world of difference between NaturallySpeaking and Voice Xpress. NaturallySpeaking needs you to use specific command syntax like "Set size 13." In sharp contrast, the commands "increase font," "increase size," "make it bigger," or even "make font 1 point bigger" all mean the same thing to Voice Xpress.
Put another way, the WordPerfect-NaturallySpeaking combination actually makes your initial job harder. It requires you to learn two products, WordPerfect and NaturallySpeaking. Voice Xpress makes you productive without having to learn Word or Voice Xpress. All you really need is a little time and common sense.
I'm an avid WordPerfect fan, but Voice Xpress sent me running back to Microsoft Word. I saw a jaw-dropping demo of an upcoming L&H product that lets you control selected applications besides Word and dictate into any application. I may go back to WordPerfect someday, but as long as L&H keeps delivering software such as Voice Xpress, I'll switch to whatever L&H decides to support. It's that good.
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Former consultant and programmer, Nick Petreley holds a sign "Will dictate columns for food." Reach him at nicholas_petreley@infoworld.com.
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