Speech recognition software that works with LibreOffice (not Dragon)?

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#1

Hi there,

I have a number of things to write and I’d like to use speech recognition to do it. Unfortunately, Windows 7 speech recognition does not seem to work with LibreOffice. I searched the web but I couldn’t find a definitive list of programs that work with Open-/LibreOffice. I tried Dragon (borrowed from a friend) but somehow it’s unable to understand me correctly no matter how much I train it (funny enough Windows speech recognition does). So is there any other software that works?

TIA
SoWhy

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#2

Detailed response here that covers MS Windows speech.

#3

I found a way to do this and have made a video about it which can be viewed here.

#7

I use Dragon Premium all the time, but have had difficulties with both LibreOffice and OpenOffice because trying to dictate directly into a document is made difficult by the dictation point (where text starts to enter when dictating) differs from where the cursor is set the by keyboard or mouse. So if I want to fill in an answer to a pre-written question, put my cursor there, start dictating, the text enters several lines below, right in the middle of other text; I haven’t been able to make out a repeatable formula for just where it jumps to, so it is hard to do a bug report. I did find that removing all fields inserted by autotext avoids the problem. For example, I have one autotext that inserts today’s date and an introductory phrase, which causes the problem to appear. I switched back to OpenOffice but that has the same problem, perhaps less frequent (I am not sure of that). The latest LibreOffice has more Dragon commands, but none of these matters are well documented, at least that I can find.

#8

Hi @SoWhy,

Based on the responses so far, it looks like the answer is: No, there isn’t currently a speech recognition software that works really well on LibreOffice.

It sounds like some people (e.g. @jpnelson40) have had okay experiences with Dragon, but that they, too, have experienced some pretty significant inconveniences.

You mention that Windows speech recognition works (separately) for you, so perhaps there are two things we should do going forward:

  1. @SoWhy - Please file an enhancement bug and ask for better support for Windows speech recognition for LibreOffice on Windows. Don’t forget to mark your bug as an ‘enhancement’.

  2. @jpnelson40 - Please file a bug about any interaction issues LibreOffice is having with Dragon. If the bug is an issue upstream, then we can send the bug to Dragon. If the QA team thinks the bugs are more of an ‘enhancement’ than a plain bug, then they can recategorize your bug as such.

Please post a link to any bugs you file in a comment below using the format “fdo#123456”.

Thanks!

#9

Related questions dealing with MS Speech can be found here and here. There is currently no support for this product. The related enhancement request is fdo#69039.

#10

There is a workaround. If you are using the Chrome browser you can load the extension SpeechTexter or Speechnotes. They both allow very accurate speech to text, together with formatting shortcuts. Once you have dictated, select the created text, do a copy and paste it into Libre Office Writer. You need to be on the net to do this. Another alternative is to use the Google docs typing tool and open the created document n Libre Office.

#4

I tried Sphinx but got bad results

#5

Hi @Eelco, Could you tell us a bit about what went wrong with Sphinx? Given that it’s also a FLOSS project, there might be an opportunity for us to work with them to try to improve the quality of the interaction.

#6

Hi @SoWhy,

Whoops! Sorry – got stuck on screen readers instead of speech-to-text!

I know that there are some people interested in this problem on GNU/Linux:

On Windows, it sounds like Dragon should have decent support:

As of this writing, Dragon does not yet provide Full Text Control (FTC) in LibreOffice’s Writer. Dragon resides in compatibility mode, which means that provided you do not use the mouse and keyboard within a document, you will have full editing and correcting capabilities by voice. You can even issue the following commands, for example: “bold (words)” or “capitalize (words)” – although the initial response to these voice commands may seem a little slow. The Dictation Box functions quite well in LibreOffice, of course.

LibreOffice’s menus and icons cannot be clicked by voice, however, custom voice commands are easily written to perform the many available features within LibreOffice.

Does anyone else have experience with Dragon?

Notes:

#11

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