abledoc
Member
I recently updated to 1.5.5 prior to that I was having a difficulty with correction. Now, frequently after correcting a word in the recognition window, then picking that selection, the result is a transposition of the last several letters in that phrase. For example
transpositions after corrections. becomes: transpositions after correctiosn.
This is happening repeatedly without any mixing of mouse or voice. And I'm using the same correction method that I've used for months.
abledoc
Member
Correction for above: prior to 1.5.5 I was having NO difficulty with corrections.
Yakker
Member
abledoc, I wonder if you are dictating into exactly the same word processor you were previously. I know that TextEdit seems to work very nicely with MSD 1.5.5, while Gmail and NisusWriter Pro (my favored word processpr) tend to confuse it. I think they must do some behind-the-scenes "editing" of their own, though I don't know that. (I'm using SnowLeopard, but as I recall the situation was the same with the earlier versions.)
My solution has been to dictate into TextEdit and then copy/paste into Gmail or NWP or whatever other vehicle I want. That does mean taking an extra step, but it works so nicely that I'm quite willing to do it. (Of course, I would like it if MSD could monitor this "behind the scenes" stuff. Maybe some day that will happen. In the meantime, I'm finding MSD a very, very helpful aid to my work.)
Ray
abledoc
Member
No, I've experienced the problem in MSD Notepad, mail, and typing into this forum from a browser. I am not using snow leopard, I am using 10.5. Most expert users are recommending to jump on board with the next upgrade of 10.6.2. I think there's a bug. I will try using textEdit.
I also agree that I find MSD enormously helpful and exciting to work with. This is an annoyance and I hope that bringing it to MacSpeech attention, and your support, will encourage MacSpeech to make the changes necessary.
fernst
Member
abledoc, are you running any of the conflicting software mentioned under the topic "Problems with Snow Leopard?" in this forum, e.g. QuicKeys, Text-Expander, etc? From what you write, interestingly, it seems that character transposition/omission is not a problem with Snow Leopard only.
abledoc
Member
Yes, I am running Quickeys. I will turn that off and observe for any improvement. I also noticed that in some cases the words are broken with spaces in the wrong places, last two words only. Again, no keyboard typing intermingled and only after making a correction with a "pick x". Good thought, thanks.
abledoc
Member
No transpositions since turning off QuicKeys. In fact, I discovered another conflict with QuicKeys and mouseclick's. I loaded X.tools and I'm using it for clicking the mouse by voice but Dictate was locking up when I use the command. Quitting QuicKeys stop the conflict. Unfortunately, your script solution,fernst, did not stop the conflict. Nevertheless, QuicKeys seems to load pretty quickly so that I'll continue to use it for those automated functions and close it down when I'm using Dictate intensively. Great tip, thank you very much.
GreggW
Member
I'm having the same problem, with acSpeech Dictate and Snow Leopard, and it's wores(see previous wor)d than what is being reported abov.e I'm getting dropped letters at both the beginning and end of a spoken phrase, as well as transposed letters at the end of a spoken phrase--and this is during dictatino, not correction.
(In this post, I am leaving in such errosr (sic), though I am correctign speech recognition errors--which are themselves not infrequent.)
I'm so frustrated that I can barely speak--the problems I find with Dictate increase linearly with the amount of time I spend with it. I'm almost ready to go back to what I wsa using before, using a PC with Dragon NaturallySpeaking to remotely contrloa Macintosh In general, Dragon NaturallySpeaking is both more reliable and more accuraet.
(FYI, I just turned QuicKeys off.)
Turning QuicKeys off to get Dictate to work is simply unacceptabel(oops--I guess that turning it off isn't the solution after all (Note the swaped letters in "unacceptabel" and the dropped space character between "unacceptabl" and the open-parenthesis that follows. Note also teh additional errors in the parenthetical noet). I have purchasdeMacSpeech products all the way back t the very first version of iListen, and I continue to be frustrated by boht the company's products and its "can't-do" attitude toward previous feedback sent to the company.
To summarize, at least in my case, turning off QuicKeys isn't the solution.
GreggW
Member
In the interest of accuracy, I just discovered that there is a difference between turning QuicKeys off (which can be done from the QuicKeys menu in the Apple menu bar) as opposed to quitting the QuicKeys program.
Now that I have quit QuicKeys, the dropped-character and transposed-characters errors have ceased, and dictation accuracy has improved.
Still, this problem is one of many problems that MacSpeech Dictate has. Did you know that it doubles every character dictated (lliikkee tthhiiss) in Aquamacs? Unbelievable.
Yakker
Member
Thanks, GreggW;
For what it's worth, I have just recently been running into trouble with MacSpeech Dictate while my newest version of Typinator has been running. (In fact I forgot to turn off Typinator before I began this message and immediately ran into the missing final letter problem.) Now that I have Quit Typinator (and not merely paused it) everything is fine again, as this comment I hope demonstrates. It may be that completely Quitting the program rather than merely pausing it is the secret to success -- at least it seems to be in my case.
So, many thanks for the clarification about Quitting rather than merely pausing these programs. You have offered us, or at least me, a very useful pointer!
Ray
fernst
Member
GreggW, regarding QuicKeys, please see my post under "Problems with Snow Leopard." QuicKeys operates with three processes. The one that causes the problem has the name "QuicKeysUserEventHelper", and it is a process that apparently waits for certain keystrokes. When you merely "turn QuicKeys off" internally, this process is still running (you should be able to see it in Activity Monitor). When you quit QuicKeys, you do of course terminate all three processes, including QuicKeysUserEventHelper. However, to re-activate QuicKeys you then have to restart it from scratch at reload all shortcuts, which in my case takes a while. This is why I wrote the Apple scripts posted under "Problems with Snow Leopard." They temporarily stop and re-activate only the one process that causes the problem (QuicKeysUserEventHelper), without needing to reload the shortcuts. On my computer, this is much quicker than quitting and restarting QuicKeys. The only problem I have observed so far is that after stopping QuicKeysUserEventHelper, it takes a moment for the problem to disappear. So, sometimes I see one more transposition even after stopping QuicKeysUserEventHelper, but after that, everything is fine.
Here's the good news: I have heard back from MacSpeech that they are in touch with Startly (vendor of QuicKeys) to solve the problem.
Regarding Aqua-Emacs and how to solve the problem of character doubling, see my post under "Dictate 1.5: Character Doubling in Carbon Emacs."
irfanh
Member
I too am suffering from this problem is character transposition when using Quickeys with Macspeech. Unfortunately I need to run both at the same time.
I just wanted to let Macspeech know that this is a problem that needs to be addressed. Aside from this bug the Macspeech experience has been very good.
Hope that the bug can be squashed soon.
rllewis
Member
I am having this same issue with text expander. I find when I turn text expander off, MacSpeech works properly. Are there any fixes for this in the future?
abledoc
Member
I want to share my response from QuicKeys about this issue in December:
"We have been in contact with the MacSpeech in regards to this specific issue. Unfortunately this does not appear to be an issue with either MacSpeech or QuicKeys, but is instead a bug in Mac OS X 10.6. There is a particular piece of technology QuicKeys uses in the Mac OS X that is causing the issue with MacSpeech. After investigating this issue we discovered any software also using the same technology will prevent MacSpeech from working correctly in 10.6.
"If we are all lucky, Apple will fix this in a future release of 10.6. Unfortunately we have no further information at this time.
Technical Advisor
Startly Technologies, LLC"
I suspect the same process area is occurring with text expander. So, I don't think the organist if fix to this problem until Apple comes out with a new global climate change operating system: desert leopard.
fernst
Member
abledoc, thank you for sharing this really interesting piece of information. Let's hope that the next OS X update resolves the problem. I just hope that Apple is actually aware of this issue...
fernst
Member
abledoc, thank you for sharing this really interesting piece of information. Let's hope that the next OS X update resolves the problem -- and that Apple is actually aware of this issue...
Les57
Member
Hello fernst - - hope you are still available - -
I have entered your scripts (posted under "Problems with Snow Leopard") exactly, but I get the error message "Syntax error: expected end of line but found unknown token". In the script window "QuicKeysUserEventHelper" has a red underline. The scripts do not work. (OS 10.6.2, QuicKeys 4.0.7, Dictate 1.5.8)
Now what? Thank you!
DoctorB
Member
I do not have quickkeys (I do have text expandre) and as you can see by my dictation of this note that I am also having similar issues with MacSpeech Dictate. There are multiple reversals of the last letters causing the spelling within the text. I truly hope that Apple and MacSpeech Dictate find a quick solution to this problem.
Thank you!
fernst
Member
Hello Les57,
this is odd. "Syntax error" means you have somehow violated the AppleScript language. However, when I copy the scripts from my web browser into AppleScriptEditor, they compile with no problem.
Please try the simple versions first (without Growl notifications). Make sure the line breaks are as shown; each script has 7 lines. The first line of each script should be exactly like this (including the quotes!):
property procName : "QuicKeysUserEventHelper"
All this does is to assign the string "QuicKeysUserEventHelper" to the (global) variable procName. Such statements are very common in Applescript. If the compiler stops at this line, the problem must be some sort of typo -- particularly check the end of the line; perhaps delete and re-type it. But the red underline may actually not indicate where the problem really is (by typing in all sorts of errors I cannot reproduce a red underline in AppleScriptEditor!).
Please do this: Subsequently de-activate each one of the 7 lines of the faulty script (or scripts) by putting two hyphens at the beginning of the line and click the "hammer" (compile) button. Tell me which line or lines you have to de-activate to make the scripts compile and check what you have in those lines that cause the problem.
Les57
Member
Ok, on "Quick Stop" --
--try
do shell script cmd
end try
...makes it compile, it seems. Likewise similar on the Quick Go script. All were identically copied & pasted from your post. Of course now they don't do anything.
BTW what setting for Context? I left it at Global.
Now what? Thanks! -LB
Les57
Member
More info: when I enter the script in Applescript Editor (as opposed to the Commands window script section in Dictate) then when I hit Compile (hammer), then the space just to the right of "try" becomes highlighted in blue. I get the same error message also ("... unknown token"). Does this tell us something is wrong with the word "try"?
fernst
Member
Hello Les57,
I could reproduce your problem now, and this is really weird. Here is how you can fix it:
0. Copy and paste the script into Dictate's (!) editor and compile it. You should see the line spacing change to single and the font color change to magenta.
1. Delete the lines containing "try" and "end try" and remove the indentation of the line "do shell script cmd."
2. Click "Compile." Now it should compile ok; you can tell by the syntax coloring and fonts that will appear.
3. Manually retype "try" and "end try" in the locations where you deleted them.
4. Click "Compile" again -- now it compiles ok.
5. Don't ask me why it behaves in this funny way ;-)
(I guess that it has to do with ill-formed line endings produced by copy and paste, consistent with your observation trying AppleScriptEditor. Strangely, I can reproduce the problem in Dictate's editor, but not in AppleScriptEditor.)
Please let me know if it works now.
abledoc
Member
Some time ago I found a different solution, does this work for you?
removing spaces
fernst
Member
abledoc, regarding "If we are all lucky, Apple will fix this in a future release of 10.6," you've probably seen it already: OS X 10.6.3 does NOT fix whatever the problem is that prevents Dictate to cooperate with QuicKeys, TextExpander et al. Too bad!
abledoc
Member
Agreed, disappointing. Perhaps when they release the next version of "black and white hungry snow leopard" it will be corrected.;)
Les57
Member
Hello fernst and others--
Okay I have gotten the scripts to compile, using your advice with retyping part of it by hand. Thank you for that, and for continuing this discussion.
But I'm afraid they don't seem to make any difference. After I say "quick stop" I still sometimes get character transpositions. And when I say "quick go" then QuicKeys remains disabled and nonfunctional until I quit it and restart it.
I wanted to give several days trial and error to make sure that this is the case, and I will continue to fool around with it. But it looks like it's a solution that may not be effective for me. Anything you can think of I'm missing or are my expectations unreasonable? Thanks, L
Les57
Member
P.S.: When I spoke by e-mail and phone with someone at Dictate, they were very firm in NOT committing to any sort of future changes, discussions with the QuicKeys people, implications that it was somehow going to be solved by Apple, or any other "hope" for the resolution of this problem. I was told that Dictate should work with any application that is Apple Development Guidelines compatible (the implication being that perhaps QuicKeys is not-?).
What I gathered was that they have taken on this code from Dragon, which happens to have this incompatibility with QuicKeys, and that there are no immediate plans or commitment to dealing with it in any fashion other than admitting that it exists.
I told them that QuicKeys has been around for many years and is most likely widely popular particularly with persons who need to reduce hand usage with their computer due to disabilities or other reasons; their market for Dictate, it would seem, are very much the same people, and so maybe they should make it a priority to make their product play nice with others. This didn't seem to make much of a positive impression, as you might imagine.
Maybe one of these days they will surprise us by fixing this. But I am not holding my breath.
Meanwhile (to at least say something positive) I am delighted by how much more fast and accurate Dictate seems to be than IListen, which I've used with some frustration for many years. Three steps forward and one step back?
fernst
Member
Hello Les57,
I think you are close to the solution, even if it does not seem so. The fact that QuicKeys remains disabled tells me that "quick stop" does work for you. I also sometimes get transpositions after stopping QuicKeys, but only within a short period (10 seconds?) after I stopped it. From then on, there are definitely no more transpositions. If you do see further transpositions, could this be because you run another conflicting software (TextExpander etc.)?
If QuicKeys doesn't come back on after you say "quick go", it seems that for some reason the AppleScript is not being carried out correctly. You have several options to test that. First of all, you can of course change the commands from "quick stop" and "quick go" to whatever you like, perhaps phrases that are easier to recognize for Dictate. Second, you can install the versions that give you feedback using growl notifications. This is helpful to verify that the scripts were actually run correctly. To make this work, of course, you need to install "Growl," but this is not particularly difficult. You can find it at http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/24638.
As a further test to see if "quick go" is working, I suggest you paste the code into AppleScript Editor and click the "Run" button. This test would eliminate any problem of Dictate recognizing the phrase that activates the script. To verify that both scripts are working correctly, you can use the utility "Activity Monitor," which resides in /Applications/Utilities/. In the middle of the main window (which you can bring up by CMD-1), there is a pop-up menu that will probably show "All Processes" when you start Activity Monitor. Change this to "Active Processes" to see only the active processes of your system. Click on "Process Name" to sort the processes by name. Find "QuicKeysUserEventHelper." Now, when you run "quick stop," this process should vanish(!) from the list because it is no longer active. Conversely, when you run "quick go," the process "QuicKeysUserEventHelper" should reappear. First see if running the script from AppleScript Editor does this correctly, then try to reproduce it using Dictate, perhaps with your own (better) choice of the command name. Back to the first issue -- getting transpositions even after halting QuicKeys -- another test would be to check if "QuicKeysUserEventHelper" is really inactive while those transpositions occur. I would be surprised if it was, but let's see.
Thank you very much -- on behalf of everyone else having this problem -- for contacting MacSpeech. I'm not too optimistic about a quick fix, either. As to who may provide a solution, it seems interesting that Dictate and QuicKeys cooperated nicely under Leopard (at least for me).
Les57
Member
Wait a minute--you mean this all works fine, no transposed letters, happy as a clam, no conflict between QuicKeys and Dictate in Leopard OS 10.5??
Actually that wouldn't be a difficult changeover for me, because I already have that loaded onto a separate startup drive.
Thanks again for the detailed discussion.
jayg
Administrator
MacSpeech Dictate is generally not compatible with QuicKeys or other auto text utilities, text expansion software and/or auto correct features which insert text based on keystrokes or other events.
We are aware of the importance of these types of accessibility and productivity solutions for Mac users. At this time, if you are using MacSpeech Dictate for text input and application control by voice, you should turn off the other solutions.
We do work toward compatibility with other Mac applications, and we do investigate issues reported to Technical Support, but I'm sorry that I don't have any other news or announcements about potential compatibility at this time.
You must log in to post.
Choose Region
Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Pacific
Canada
United Kingdom
United States, Rest of the World
© 2010 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Click here for information on Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition products.
