KDE-Forum.org

Hi,
I'm aware that I'm a new guy, but I was directed here by some folks at Open Office.

I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but I will also include ancillary information which, hopefully, will indicate my sense of urgency.

a) I would like to respectfully suggest that Speech Recognition be move forward in the agenda.
b) I would like to mention "touch" software which I/we have developed and has been released to the community.

Speech Recognition:

Please allow me to relate something which has happened to me and a subsidary report.

I have a student in one of my Face to Face classes, I teach Biology in a junior college, who was talking to his computer, before class, in the classroom. I inquired what he was doing. He replied that he has incipient carpel tunnel and that he had begun talking his assignments. I inquired as to how long it took to train the software and he replied FIVE MINUTES. (In contra distinction to Dragon and Viavoice of just a few years ago).

He was talking in the ambient noise of the "pre class" classroom.

I type SO MUCH with my online classes that I immediately tried the training etc. on my Vista Machine. Normally, I use Linux exclusively, my Impress lectures, testing, etc. but because the j/c went completely to Vista and Office2007 I had to purchase a machine that would read and write to the materials produced by the college in the interim before OO produced compatability with docx.

Anyhow, after repeating some really dumb statements such as "I really like talking to my computer" for five minutes, the machine was trained and I did my first assignment.

This is using an inexpensive headset and listening to SOMA FM on the Linux machine which is a few feet away.

HERE IS THE POINT:

Aero Glass, pooh poohed by one an all as vapourware, has slid in "under the radar" as the voice command file structure.

To "save as" I say "FILE"... the file structure appears....ALL of it... I say "show numbers" and semi-transparent, shiney, color coordinated Aero Glass buttons appear over all the file commands with a unique number. If I want to "save as" I might say "five" and it asks for confirmation, if I want .rtf, I might say "fourteen" and it asks for a confirmation, to save I might say "three" and it is done, end of story.

In a report from CES today.... ol' Bill did not talk much about the "desktop" he talked about..... "talking to the computer".

Advertisings for cars emphasizing Windows as the voice recognition system started last week.

Second point....subsidary to above....

Ol' Bill also discussed "SURFACE".

That is the "coffee table" computer which appeared a few months ago and was roundly pooh poohed, it is now appearing in hotels as an alternative to the "normal touch screen"...

EDIT:....the below sentence was in error.
That software was ORIGINALLY A LINUX APP......
EDIT: .... in discussions at another forum a poster indicated that "Surface" had been in development before the X-org version... I spent a considerable amount of time searching out where this misapprehension happened on my part. It had occured from another poster, in discussion of the Surface computer who stated that "Sam Han has had a version of this for a long time but didn't know which "distro" he used to develop it."

Apparently, the timeline is something like: MS 2001 Han and Hurterer around 2004/2005.
I'm sorry for the misrepresentation.
EDIT end.

That software is why I/we produced Calypso Dancer.

EDIT

However, we started working on Calypso Dancer in fall of 2006.

Edit end

We released it as FOSS and then spent money advertising it, hoping that someone would enable it as a menu system in Linux that would FIRST be for "touch" and then....for 3D with gloves and goggles...

Whether the Calypso Dancer will ever fly or not, we don't know, but...

I am fully aware that I have no information about the currents and undercurrents of what is going on in Linux, but I would also, respectfully, like to suggest that speech recognition be moved somewhat forward on the agenda or..... after all the millions of person hours that have been spent developing the KDE system and KDE Office, it will be truely and finally marginalized by the billions of dollars that Microsith is, apparently, willing to throw at speech recognition, and somewhat, at the touch interface.

Again, I am not aware of what is going on "behind the scenes" and, again, I am a "first poster", I do not mean to offend anyone or to sound "preachy", but I really am rather passionate about this.

As to helping, since I use Vista's version almost daily, I will be MORE THAN GLAD to "beta test" a FOSS version on a lappy which is exclusively Linux(my main machine).

I am also a published author, and have written many "training manuals"...I will gladly help on "documentation".

Again, my apologies ahead of time to anyone whom I may have inadvertently offended by this post.

woodsmoke4

well, thanks for the kind consideration but I guess it was all just a tempest in a teapot anyway.

woodsmoke