Speech to text that works with Writer

[mourningdoves1]

I am a writer, and I have arthritis in one hand: not a wonderful combo. Microsoft’s speech-to-text module in Windows 10 is quite good, but it doesn’t work in LibO. (I’m on v24.8.4.2 now, but I first tried it on one of the last v7s.) I’m having to talk into WordPad, which has its shortcomings.

Any suggestions? If possible, I would prefer a program that I can purchase, not a subscription-only model. Of course, if there’s something free out there that works well, I won’t complain too hard, but I have no problem paying for something that also works well.

Thanks for any suggestions; and I may be switching one of my desktops to Linux, so suggestions relevant to that platform are also welcome. Gotta go now, my thumb is starting to hurt.

[EarnestAl]

I successfully tested Windows text to speech in LibreOffice a few years ago, Can you go from speech to text in Libre Office? - #5 by EarnestAl .

I just went through those steps now and it works in LibreOffice 24.8.4.2 Windows 11. I have no reason to think it wouldn’t work in Windows 10
.

BTW If you upgrade from Windows 10, you won’t get Wordpad on a new computer, it is being removed in Windows 11 24H2, Deprecated features in the Windows client

[mourningdoves1]

Thanks. I bookmarked the link to what you wrote and I’ll review it tomorrow when I might be more with it. Not all those steps sound familiar, so I might have been leaving something out or going about it in the wrong order, or something.

[Pertsa]

I upgraded from Windows 10 and there was 4 voice packages installed on my system Microsoft David en-US (United States) , Microsoft Mark en-US (United States) , Microsoft Zira en-US (United States) and Microsoft Heid - Finnish (Finland) . Then updated LibreOffice to version 24.8.4.2 and installed Read Text Extension package. It works, but I couldn’t get it to read in my native language until i did some fine-tuning

[Huskey]

I do a lot of recording on the road and the best solution I have found so far is OneNote. It works well for me and when I get home I just copy and paste into my favourite editor.

[mourningdoves1]

Sorry for the late reply; I had to attend to some family business that came up rather suddenly.

I could get decent transcription in WordPad. But when I tried LibreOffice, with two different microphones, the speech recognition kept asking me, “What was that?” One day I got it to type a word or two; tonight, even with a microphone, speech recognition went stone-deaf.

Since it works in WordPad, and EarnestAI got it working in 24.8.4.2 (which is what I have), I’m stumped. I was thinking that Windows doesn’t like my sound card or my microphone, but I’d think then it wouldn’t like them in WordPad either. (BTW, Tossing WordPad overboard seems rather gratuitous; I can’t imagine it causing any harm if it’s just sitting there.)

I appreciate the comments, though. Thanks.

[mikekaganski]

Unlike other accessibility features, like screen reading - which depends much on the active software (here: LibreOffice), that must provide the relevant information (the controls, their text, their state, their relations, etc.) to the accessibility software (it may be Windows built-in a11y features, or Orca, or the like), - the text-to-speech feature is largely independent on the target software (here: LibreOffice). Switching between controls, manipulating them (like “pressing” toolbar buttons), of course, needs the target software cooperation; but inserting text only depends on the target software already having caret in the correct point, and accepting the normal system input. E.g., on Windows, dictating to the built-in tool will produce a sequence of normal window messages (WM_KEYDOWN, WM_CHAR, WM_KEYUP), same as if one would press keyboard buttons.

However, a11y in LibreOffice may have bugs. It would be very useful to find the circumstances under which it shows up…

[mourningdoves1]

Hello Mike, my use case is pretty simple; I’ve been trying to transcribe written notes I took on a book I’m reading. I’m not putting in non-letter characters except commas and periods, and the vocabulary isn’t specialized.

I haven’t installed any special accessibility software; I’m using only what came with Windows 10. I’m not aware of any modules within LibreOffice that specifically deal with speech-to-text. My wife doesn’t especially like it when I do experiments with her computer but maybe I’ll have a chance to replicate the problem there.