Hi!

Thanks for the informative forum, it's helped me out loads.

I wonder if  anyone can give me some advice please ?

I'm developing a speech recognition solution for a radiology practice whereby they can view x-rays etc and make comments on the images they are viewing. Then, via speech recognition, the comments are captured to a report. The practice is using Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 pro. For the interim, the practice is opening Dragon Bar, putting focus on the report they want to dictate into and and clicking the mic button in the Dragon Bar to start the Speech Recognition Process.

I want to streamline this whole process.I also have Dragon NS 10 Pro installed on my PC and I develop in Delphi. I installed the Activex Components which come with Dragon NS and put together a sample app which allows speech recognition without the use of the Dragon Bar. The app has a dgnMicbtn, dgnDictEdit, dgnEngineControl and Memo component. The user clicks the Mic button, speaks into the mic and whatever he says gets recognised and put into the memo. Fairly simple.

I want to implement this code from my sample app into our program but I first have a few questions:

1. I read up that there is a Nuance SDK that costs something like $5000? How are the ActiveX components which I installed different to the components which come with the SDK ?

2. Are there any licencing costs involved with using these Activex Components ? As I mentioned, the practice has already purchased Dragon NS 10 so it's not like we would have to ship out any DLLs

3. Would my company have to be registered with Nuance in any way as an 'Authorised Nuance Developer' or anything along those lines ?

Thanks in advance!

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Thanks for the reply, Lunis!

Upgrading to dns medical is one option, yes.

The thing is, this sample app that I wrote works a charm. It also locks the dictation on to the memo so the radiologist can set focus on to his X-ray, move the image around etc and still dictate into the memo.

But as I said, i managed to get this right with the activex components which comes standard with dns 10 (from dnstk10.dll) and not via the sdk that you must purchase from nuance.

So really my question is whether or not there are licence fees involved with using these activex components? I personally can't see there being any as the practice has already purchased dns 10. Why make the activex components available then?

I suppose this isn't the right forum to bring this up and i should actually be getting this answer from nuance (somehow??). But I was hoping that someone on this forum maybe had experience with this matter before.

Will let you know what I find out

Cheers 

You are perfectly correct in that technically, nothing further than what's available through the DLL would be involved (and the SDK wouldn't add to it), and if people running your application are using the Professional version of Dragon, the license involved has already been paid for implicitely.

Things are different when providing third-party applictations to people having less than the Professional version, allowing for functionality which otherwise is not available.

Rüdiger

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

Ryan,

The only advantage of purchasing the DNS SDK is that it is a developers kit that allows you to create standalone applications using runtime licensing that doesn't require that Dragon NaturallySpeaking be installed on users systems.

In other words, you use the standalone SDK to create applications and then incorporate a run-time that is basically Dragon without the GUI. That's what is expensive because you not only have to purchase the SDK but you also are required to enter into a contract with Nuance for run-time licenses. That is, in order to distribute your application without the necessity of using a version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking as a run-time, you not only have to purchase the support package but you have to pay for each run-time license. That may suit some developers under certain conditions, but it isn't necessary because everything that is contained within the Professional versions of DNS (dnstk10.dll) is the same as what you get with the standalone SDK, the only difference is that standalone SDK contains an evaluation runtime. In order to develop and distribute a standalone application using the standalone SDK, you have to purchase a license for each copy that you distribute, and that can be expensive because there is a minimum number of run-time licenses that you have to purchase. When I was SDK Program Manager, the minimum purchase of run-time licenses was $50,000. I'm sure they haven't changed it that much if at all. You also have to enter into a licensing contract, which is part of the expense of the SDK and the contract determines what you can and can't do.

Otherwise, as long as your clients are using DNS 10-10.1 Professional, Legal, or Medical. There's no need to go any further and there are no licensing fees. The only thing that you can't do is to distribute your application with any version of DNS other than the Professional versions. That is, you would be in violation of the EULA (End-User License Agreement) if you were to attempt to apply or distribute your application with DNS Standard/Preferred (DNS 10), or DNS Home/Premium (DNS 11).

As long as you confine the use of your application to the Professional versions of DNS, you're fine just the way you are and just the way you have done up to this point. Again, the only issue is that your clients must have DNS Professional, Legal, or Medical in order to use your application without violating the End-User License Agreement.