I'm new to programming, I am also disabled. I broke my neck 18 years ago and am trying to learn programming. It is very difficult to write code when you can't use your hands. I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 preferred to write this, and it is a great tool for the disabled, but it is very limited when it comes to writing code. I've tried using Windows 7 voice recognition in Visual Studio, what a bad idea that was! It doesn't even understand IDE interface and writing any code with it is totally impossible. I heard some genius tried to make an add-on for Visual Studio to enable voice recognition in C. sharp, but I never heard anything else about it. So I was wondering if anyone out there could suggest a code editor that works well with voice recognition or perhaps teach me how to integrate voice-recognition into an editor of my own creation. By the way usually I write code using what's called a mouth stick, and that is just what it sounds like a stick you hold in your mouth. It is a very inefficient and painful way to do anything. So if you could please drop a suggestion or two it would be very appreciated thanks.

Ironsides 35

We have some emails out to folks around the company who can help with suggestions and guidance. Stay tuned.
C

davewill said:

I'd be curious to know the answer to this as well.  I tried to create something for visual studio with the Speech SDK 5 back when it came out but after a few days found that it was looking like a pretty big job for me to tackle on the side.  Since then it seems like client side speech progress has halted.

Thanks for your responses, the speech SDK is great in theory, but in the the the the practical use it's pretty much worthless at the moment.

As far as what W3bbo suggested that is great idea but incredibly expensive. The last time I checked a similar device cost around $998.99 which is far more than I can afford. I live in southeast Georgia, and there are close to 0 dollars coming in that are used to help the disabled right now so getting one through Vocational Rehabilitation is out of the question.

The mouth stick I mentioned above cost nealy $60.00 alone and its just aluminum and plastic. Everything that is geared toward the use of the disabled cost nearlly 4 times a product geared toward a normal person. Liability insurance is killing the companys that make this stuff. So in other words the product is not in my income range.

Thanks Chuck the sentiment is very nice I will stay tuned, and thanks again W3bbo and davewill.

Ironsides35

ironsides35 said:

davewill said:

*snip*

Thanks for your responses, the speech SDK is great in theory, but in the the the the practical use it's pretty much worthless at the moment.

 

As far as what W3bbo suggested that is great idea but incredibly expensive. The last time I checked a similar device cost around $998.99 which is far more than I can afford. I live in southeast Georgia, and there are close to 0 dollars coming in that are used to help the disabled right now so getting one through Vocational Rehabilitation is out of the question.

 

The mouth stick I mentioned above cost nealy $60.00 alone and its just aluminum and plastic. Everything that is geared toward the use of the disabled cost nearlly 4 times a product geared toward a normal person. Liability insurance is killing the companys that make this stuff. So in other words the product is not in my income range.

 

Thanks Chuck the sentiment is very nice I will stay tuned, and thanks again W3bbo and davewill.

 

Ironsides35

Can you set the speech recognition to accept individual characters? For programming I would think that it's much better and faster if you could spell each character seperately.

Charles said:

Hi Ironside35,

 

We have some emails out to folks around the company who can help with suggestions and guidance. Stay tuned.
C

Charles, did you edit my posts again? Censorship is one thing, but it's particularly insidious if you don't declare it.

I wasn't being funny or offensive, just expressing my opinion of a bad situation. There was no bad-taste joke intended.

W3bbo said:

Charles said:

*snip*

Charles, did you edit my posts again? Censorship is one thing, but it's particularly insidious if you don't declare it.

 

I wasn't being funny or offensive, just expressing my opinion of a bad situation. There was no bad-taste joke intended.

Guilty as charged. I didn't like the way it came across. Sorry.

Send me mail. I don't want to litter this thread with a debate on the topic.

C

imagine the goodwill it could generate. imagine the real change it could lead to in people's lives (to be gainfully employed or at the very least have a productive hobby).

even still... $1000 is not all that much amongst a guild. if the eye-tracking hardware is too expensive and if someone else coordinates, i'd put $50 in on it to get ironsides35 going.

itsnotabug said:

this kind of corporate sponsorship.... one that empowers people to use the company's products, would be an excellent program for microsoft to adopt.

 

imagine the goodwill it could generate. imagine the real change it could lead to in people's lives (to be gainfully employed or at the very least have a productive hobby).

 

even still... $1000 is not all that much amongst a guild. if the eye-tracking hardware is too expensive and if someone else coordinates, i'd put $50 in on it to get ironsides35 going.

thax bro that means a lot to people like me.

ZippyV said:

ironsides35 said:

*snip*

Can you set the speech recognition to accept individual characters? For programming I would think that it's much better and faster if you could spell each character seperately.

This  can be done, with the "SPELL" command using  dragon but you already mentioned why this is impracticle. Seplling out every line of code will take forever to write even a simple program. And Ms Speech recognition wont do it unless you are using notepad or wordpad or something else that is compatible with it and programs like notepad++ and jedit don't cut the mustard I'm afraid. Any ways thanks for the suggestion I have acctualy tried to do this and was so out of breath frustrated by all the mistakes dragon made trying to figure out my southeast Georgia accent I had to stop after the first line. Lololol. Thanks bro.

ironsides35 said:

ZippyV said:

*snip*

This  can be done, with the "SPELL" command using  dragon but you already mentioned why this is impracticle. Seplling out every line of code will take forever to write even a simple program. And Ms Speech recognition wont do it unless you are using notepad or wordpad or something else that is compatible with it and programs like notepad++ and jedit don't cut the mustard I'm afraid. Any ways thanks for the suggestion I have acctualy tried to do this and was so out of breath frustrated by all the mistakes dragon made trying to figure out my southeast Georgia accent I had to stop after the first line. Lololol. Thanks bro.

I don't think generalized speech recognition is going to work for this. That said, I think speech recognition can be made to work for coding, it just needs to be heavily specialized.

I'm envisioning an editor that will autocomplete common constructs based on speech commands (kind of like snippets) instead of having to punctuate everything yourself. It would have to context-aware to know when it should be listening for an identifier, a keyword, an operator, etc. It should have a separate mode to define variable/type/method/property/etc. names (which would probably need to be done using spelling). It should then listen for those identifiers which are in scope at the current editing position.

I would certainly not be impossible to build something like this with the Windows Speech API. It might even be possible to do it as a VS add-in. But to make it truly flexible and usable enough would not be easy.

C

Charles said:

Chris, come on... Not on this thread, please....

C

What stops you from banning him and removing his post, Mr moderator?

ZippyV said:

Charles said:

*snip*

What stops you from banning him and removing his post, Mr moderator?

Or maybe even just modifying it

W3bbo said:

ZippyV said:

*snip*

Or maybe even just modifying it

Done.

C

ZippyV said:

Charles said:

*snip*

What stops you from banning him and removing his post, Mr moderator?

Done.
C

itsnotabug said:

this kind of corporate sponsorship.... one that empowers people to use the company's products, would be an excellent program for microsoft to adopt.

 

imagine the goodwill it could generate. imagine the real change it could lead to in people's lives (to be gainfully employed or at the very least have a productive hobby).

 

even still... $1000 is not all that much amongst a guild. if the eye-tracking hardware is too expensive and if someone else coordinates, i'd put $50 in on it to get ironsides35 going.

Count me in for  $50 aswell. 

Glucose said:

This is a pretty interesting perspective (video) on coding in VS with voice... http://www.renaissance.co.il/VSSpeech.aspx

That's nice, but it's not really appropriate for people with limited (or no) sight (yet). There's still typing involved.

Maybe a text editor is not the right paradigm for “writing code” for blind people. Maybe we should try to find a better model to map the mental programming process to code. I do realize that's easier said than done, and adding speech recognition to text editors is still better than nothing at all.

TommyCarlier said:

Glucose said:

*snip*

That's nice, but it's not really appropriate for people with limited (or no) sight (yet). There's still typing involved.

Maybe a text editor is not the right paradigm for “writing code” for blind people. Maybe we should try to find a better model to map the mental programming process to code. I do realize that's easier said than done, and adding speech recognition to text editors is still better than nothing at all.

Considering speech recognition on top of a text editor: wouldn't a modal editor (à la VIM) be way better for this? By default, you're in “command mode” (which is ideal for speech recognition), and to enter text you switch to “insertion mode” via a command. Navigating the code would not be via the line/column-paradigm (up, down, left, right), but could happen via the code model (statements, blocks, …).

TommyCarlier said:

TommyCarlier said:

*snip*

Considering speech recognition on top of a text editor: wouldn't a modal editor (à la VIM) be way better for this? By default, you're in “command mode” (which is ideal for speech recognition), and to enter text you switch to “insertion mode” via a command. Navigating the code would not be via the line/column-paradigm (up, down, left, right), but could happen via the code model (statements, blocks, …).

I immediately think of a system based on code snippets for everything (like an 'if' snippet for an empty conditional and a 'bool function' snippet for an empty functionreturning bool, etc.) with a simplified, voice activated snippet insertion (say "snippet int function" to insert the pre-formatted, empty function returning int).

Generally a voice-activated intellisense; say "variable" to create a dropdown list of variables in scope so one can be selected.

So saying "snippet if.  variable cancontinue. equivalent to. true" would create:

if (canContinue == true) { }

Hmm. An interesting field and one I wish I had time to think about properly.

Herbie

Dr Herbie said:

TommyCarlier said:

*snip*

I immediately think of a system based on code snippets for everything (like an 'if' snippet for an empty conditional and a 'bool function' snippet for an empty functionreturning bool, etc.) with a simplified, voice activated snippet insertion (say "snippet int function" to insert the pre-formatted, empty function returning int).

 

Generally a voice-activated intellisense; say "variable" to create a dropdown list of variables in scope so one can be selected.

 

So saying "snippet if.  variable cancontinue. equivalent to. true" would create:

 

 

if (canContinue == true) { }

 

 

Hmm. An interesting field and one I wish I had time to think about properly.

 

Herbie

 

I think a language like Python is better suited for speech recognition: no unnecessary curly braces and semicolons.

Glucose said:

This is a pretty interesting perspective (video) on coding in VS with voice... http://www.renaissance.co.il/VSSpeech.aspx

This is the "Genius" I mentioned above. It would be great to try butI they have not posted an update since that video was shot.

Sven Groot said:

ironsides35 said:

*snip*

I don't think generalized speech recognition is going to work for this. That said, I think speech recognition can be made to work for coding, it just needs to be heavily specialized.

 

I'm envisioning an editor that will autocomplete common constructs based on speech commands (kind of like snippets) instead of having to punctuate everything yourself. It would have to context-aware to know when it should be listening for an identifier, a keyword, an operator, etc. It should have a separate mode to define variable/type/method/property/etc. names (which would probably need to be done using spelling). It should then listen for those identifiers which are in scope at the current editing position.

 

I would certainly not be impossible to build something like this with the Windows Speech API. It might even be possible to do it as a VS add-in. But to make it truly flexible and usable enough would not be easy.

this is what I was thinking about myself great idea thanks

Sven Groot said:

ironsides35 said:

*snip*

I don't think generalized speech recognition is going to work for this. That said, I think speech recognition can be made to work for coding, it just needs to be heavily specialized.

 

I'm envisioning an editor that will autocomplete common constructs based on speech commands (kind of like snippets) instead of having to punctuate everything yourself. It would have to context-aware to know when it should be listening for an identifier, a keyword, an operator, etc. It should have a separate mode to define variable/type/method/property/etc. names (which would probably need to be done using spelling). It should then listen for those identifiers which are in scope at the current editing position.

 

I would certainly not be impossible to build something like this with the Windows Speech API. It might even be possible to do it as a VS add-in. But to make it truly flexible and usable enough would not be easy.

this is exactlly what I'm talking about

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/350348/can-i-write-sql-using-speech-recognition

I got the pro version of DNS and have a CSharp vocabulary. The thing that is missing, is all the custom identifiers. I haven't figured any easy way to deal with that, except to extend the vocabulary with english words, then use things like "cap that" and "compound that". Intellisense can help you select an identifier if you say just one english word, then say "tab" when the correct identifier appears. So far, however, it has been clumsy. I believe better macros and snippets are needed. Here is my starting list of words for DNS below:

abstract
as
base
bool
break;\break
byte
case
catch
char
checked
class
const
continue;\continue
decimal
default
delegate
do
double
else
enum
event
explicit
extern
false
finally
fixed
float
for
foreach\for each
get
if
implicit
in
int
interface
internal
is
lock
long
namespace\name space
new
null
object
operator
out
override
params
private
protected
public
readonly\read only
ref
return
sbyte\s byte
sealed
set
short
sizeof\size of
static
string
struct
switch
this
throw
true
try
typeof\type of
uint\you int
ulong\you long
unchecked
unsafe
ushort\you short
using
virtual
volatile
void
dynamic
Equals\equals method
from
global
group
in
into
join
let
on
orderby\order by
partial
remove
select
sizeof\size of
value
var
where
yield
while
\New-Line
\New-Paragraph
\All-Caps
\All-Caps-On
\All-Caps-Off
\Cap
\Caps-On
\Caps-Off
\No-Caps
\No-Caps-On
\No-Caps-Off
\No-Space
\No-Space-On
\No-Space-Off
\space-bar
\tab-key
a\alpha
b\bravo
c\charlie
d\delta
e\echo
f\foxtrot
g\golf
h\hotel
i\india
j\juliet
k\kilo
l\lima
m\mike
n\november
o\oscar
p\papa
q\quebec
r\romeo
s\sierra
t\tango
u\uniform
v\victor
w\whiskey
x\xray
y\yankee
z\zulu
PM
AM
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
thirty
forty
fifty
sixty
seventy
eighty
ninety
hundred
thousand
million
billion
trillion
;\semicolon
?\question mark
:\colon
??\question mark question mark
.\dot
()\open close paren
(\open paren
)\close paren
{\open brace
}\close brace
{}\open close brace
[\open bracket
]\close bracket
=\equals
==\equal to
!=\not equal to
!\not
<\less than
>\greater than
<=\less than or equal to
>=\greater than or equal to
&&\and
||\or
&\bit wise and
|\bit wise or
~\bit wise not
-\minus
+\plus
*\times
/\divided by
^\exclusive or
++\plus plus
--\minus minus
%\percent
<<\left shift
>>\right shift
+=\plus equals
*=\times equals
-=\minus equals
/=\divide equals
%=\percent equals
&=\and equals
|=\or equals
^=\exclusive or equals
<<=\left shift equals
>>=\right shift equals
=>\lambda
_\underscore
"\double quote
'\single quote
""\empty string
System
Math
ComponentModel\component model

I know that it's a bit late with this thread, but better late than never I suppose. I'm a Software Engineering undergraduate and for my final year project I'm doing a voice code editor. I was initially planning to do a plug in for VS. Because it's an undergraduate project I limited my scope to generating a "for" loop with the voice command. The language I chose was C#.

Well with the little bit of research I've done, I have a problem in building up my defense for this project. I want to go ahead with this project but the question that hinders me is, "What's the use of it?" Though I keep explaining that it'll help programmers who are going through RSIs and other disabilities, that doesn't seem to convince many. Because technology has advanced and there are other options.

Secondly, though I want to do it as a plug in for VS, I'm not sure if I'm going on the correct track.

So it would be a great help if anyone can give some ideas on this. Thanks in advance.

@Charles. Did you ever get an reply regarding this?

@ironside35 ... if you are seeing this? Have you found a solution?

Also ... i am still up for 50 bucks if that can help