I searched and found no entries on this: I have a Word document that opens just fine as rtf in DNS7.3 Pro's DragonPad. If I open it in Word, with Dragon running, the thing is as dumb as a doorknob. Is this normal? intentional? The help files weren't helpful on this one. 

So my question is: Will DNS 7.3 Pro read back an rtf file or a Word file opened in Word for XP on a system that lets DragonPad do it nicely? For starters, it looks like a yes or no question. If no, then I'll learn to live without the feature in Word.

Has anyone successfully gotten any DNS Pro to read from Word?  

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PORTUGUESEINTERPRETER.COM

TTS should work fine in Word.

 

You shouldn't have any problem forcing NaturallySpeaking to read back any highlighted text with the NaturallySpeaking text-to-speech reader.  Just highlight the text and say Read That

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Experience has taught me NOT to use voice commands on highlighted stuff, especially entire paragraphs or pages. DNS Pro almost always fails to understand bold and underline commands, destroys stuff and won't Undo the damage unless coaxed. I feel safer with the microphone off, using dropdown menus and keyboard commands.

If this means the dropdown menus will NOT work in Word but will work in DragonPad, I'll continue to keep two files onscreen--one to edit and the other to read to me so I can spot errors to correct in the other--at least until some future version fixes the bug. I tried DNS6 Pro in Win2k & Word97 on another PC and got the same results: text reader functional in Wordpad, even with mic off, but dead-in-the-water in Word. Sigh...

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PORTUGUESEINTERPRETER.COM

Until you get your problem resolved, you might want to try a third-party program like TextAloud (http://www.nextup.com/). It gives you a lot more control, particularly, the ability to pause the reading, and you can directly save the reading as a WAV or MP3 file. It's unfortunate to have to resort to third-party stuff when you should already have a built-in solution, but the added functionality of programs like TextAloud make them well worth the price.

There's no real risk of damaging text in Microsoft Word because programs like Word, WordPerfect, IE6 and even WordPad (but not DragonPad) include multiple undo/redo capabilities.  No matter how many mistakes you make, you can undo the damage by pressing {Ctrl+z} as many times as you want and if you're using KnowBrainer 7 you additionally have Undo <1-20> and Redo <1-20> commands available to you.  The whole purpose to speech recognition is to think voice (lazy) rather than keyboard ;-)

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This is a legitimate concern as Dragon NaturallySpeaking understanding speech can be more prone to more misrecognitions than say a typist making a typing mistake. There is less of tactile instantly stopping nature to it. Once a audiable mistake is spoken mid-speaking a command, it's better to keep speaking it out until the end, just in case the garbled reading is close enough to be recognized properly, thus avoiding having to hit undo. However, if you finally have to hit undo -- that is once the utterance is complete -- you can say undo that or press ctrl-z and it will completely remove those effects. Everything can be reversed. Sometimes saying scratch that works too. I don't use that last one much. 

Also note that those terms can also be found defined in my NaturallySpeakingFAQ.

Ian Nastajus 

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Former primary author of Speechwiki NaturallySpeaking FAQ.