Episode: 1769
Title: HPR1769: A Demonstration of Dictation Software on my Office Computer
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1769/hpr1769.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:03:46

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This is HPR episode 1,769 entitled A Demonstration of Dictation Software on my office computer,
and in part of the series Accessibility, it is hosted by John Kulp and is about 14 minutes long.
The summary is, I record a full show in dictation mode to demonstrate dragon dictation software capabilities.
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Hey everybody, I thought I should give a quick heads up about the nature of this episode.
It's pretty weird sounding when you listen to it all by itself. What I'm demonstrating here is
dictation software, specifically the dragon dictate software program that I use on my office
computer. It's a Mac mini that I have at work. It sounds weird because I use a lot of
punctuation with my mouth. One thing I really wish I'd remembered to do, and this demonstrates
again the difficulty of doing really good dictation. I forgot to do new paragraphs in between different
thoughts. Well, the transcript is going to look a little bit funny because it's going to be one
giant paragraph. One other thing I suggest that you do is watch the YouTube video that I'm going
to link to. It's a screen capture that I made immediately after recording this episode.
I dumped the wave file over to my Mac mini and ran the transcription tool on dragon dictate
to transcribe the audio into text. I really think you should watch it. It's pretty impressive.
It does it at about two or three times the real time that it took to record the episode. It's
pretty cool to watch and I think you would enjoy it. That's it. I hope you enjoy this demonstration
of dictation. One more thing. Record a show. Upload it to HPR. We really could use some more shows
right about now or else you guys are going to get really sick of hearing me post all these shows. Okay,
that's it. Bye.
Hi everybody, exclamation point. This is John Culp in Lafayette, comma, Louisiana period.
I am going to do a rather strange episode today, period. What I'm doing is demonstrating the
dictation software that I use on the office computer that I have here at work, period.
If you've listened to my previous episodes, comma, then you have heard me speak of the
Blather speech recognition program that I use on my Linux desktop, comma. But as you may also
remember, comma, Blather is not a dictation tool, period. Blather is a tool where you have to set
up commands that will run other commands, period. In other words, comma, you have to configure
everything from scratch, period. I do have some capabilities for dictation on my Linux desktop,
comma, but they involve using the Google Web Speech API and a special dictation box that I have
set up, comma, and these are not at all good for long form dictation, period. For serious dictation,
comma, such as writing letters and memos and other long form text, comma, you really need a
proper dictation tool, period. These are available built into the operating systems of Windows and
Mac OS 10, comma, but I normally use the dragon, naturally speaking software instead, period.
I have found that it is more accurate and more powerful than the built-in versions that you can get
on either Windows or Mac, period. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try out the built-in speech
recognition on Windows and Mac, comma. You definitely should, comma, because I think you would be very
impressed with them, period. I know for sure that the version on Windows learns from your voice
and from the corrections that you make to the text that you have spoken, comma, and eventually
becomes very powerful in recognizing your speech, period. The biggest problem that I had with the
Windows speech recognition was that it was a huge memory hog and frequently brought my system to a
grinding halt, period. This is not good, period. Blather never does that, comma, but then again,
blather cannot take dictation, period. The latest system that I use for dictation is on a fairly
recent Mac mini running the nuance dragon dictate software, period. This is a very powerful
dictation program that learns from your speech patterns and you can also add words to the vocabulary
so that it will get them right when it hears them, period. This is especially important to do
if you have frequently used unusual words, comma, such as a name with an alternate spelling
from what is normally in the program's dictionary, period. One of the great things about
the Mac dragon dictate program, comma, also, comma is its ability to do transcriptions of audio files,
period. In fact, the reason I am speaking this way is that I plan to use the transcription of
this recording as the show notes verbatim without any corrections, period. The difficulty that most
people have with dictation software at least initially is doing things like punctuation and capitalization
period. You have to remember to do these things or else your transcript will come out without
any punctuation or capitalization, comma, unless the words that you are speaking are known proper
nouns, period. It also capitalizes automatically at the beginning of sentences, comma, so that if you
use periods frequently, then you will have capitalized words after those periods, period.
You can see that I am having trouble speaking this text in a fluent way, comma, and this is one of
the other difficulties that people have when initially using transcription software, period.
It works best when you can express complete thoughts without pausing, comma, because it learns from
the context of your words, period. It has algorithms that calculate the possibility of one word or
another based on the context, comma, and so it is much better to speak entire sentences at one
than it is to pause while trying to gather your thoughts, period. This is a major difference from
trying to write at the keyboard, comma, where it does not matter at all if you pause for seconds or
even minutes while you think of what you want to write next, period. Anyhow, comma, I highly recommend
using some kind of dictation software if you suffer from repetitive strain injuries like I do,
period. This will save you many thousands of key strokes, period. Even if it's only using
the speech recognition that's available on your phones over the web, comma, that's better than
nothing, period. The disadvantage of any of these services that have to send your recording over
the web to get a transcription and then send it back into your device is that they will never
learn your voice and your particular speech patterns, period. In order for that to work best,
comma, you really have to use a dedicated standalone speech recognition program that resides locally
on your computer and saves your profile and learns from your speaking, period.
Well, comma, I guess that is about it for today, comma. I hope you have enjoyed hearing this
brief lesson on dictation, period. See you next time, exclamation point.
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