NaturalWord

Last Modified: March 22, 2000

In November of 1997, Dragon Systems has released a new feature for Dragon NaturallySpeaking called NaturalWord. NaturalWord allows you to dictate directly into Microsoft Word as if you are dictating into Dragon NaturallySpeaking's own editor. (Dragon NaturallySpeaking currently supports Microsoft Word 97, Word 98 and Word 2000.)

For version 2.0, NaturalWord is an add-on for both the Preferred and Deluxe editions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. (NaturalWord does not work with the version 2.0 Personal Edition.)

Starting with version 3.0, NaturalWord is included in all editions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and is installed automatically without having to download the feature from the web.

With NaturalWord, Microsoft Word is speech enabled. NaturalWord adds both a toolbar and a menu to Microsoft Word. The toolbar contains many of the icons on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking editor window's own toolbar. And the menu allows you to access all of the features of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

A menu item allows you to connect Microsoft Word to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Once you connect Microsoft Word to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and turn on the microphone, then you can dictate directly into Microsoft Word. You can also correct errors in Microsoft Word using the same techniques that you use directly in Dragon NaturallySpeaking's own editor window. You can use the command "Select <text>" or "Correct That" or any of the other editing or correction commands directly in Microsoft Word. You can also playback recorded speech or use text to speech.

In fact, all of the features of Dragon NaturallySpeaking with very few exceptions are available in Microsoft Word using NaturalWord. (I know that there is no yellow arrow pointing to text when you use playback of recorded speech in Microsoft Word, and you cannot double-click on a word in Microsoft Word to correct it like you can in Dragon NaturallySpeaking's own editor. But I know of no other missing features.)

As long as you install the Service Release 1, the only downside of using NaturalWord is that you will need at least 16 MB more memory than using Dragon NaturallySpeaking alone. Expect to need at least 48MB to use NaturalWord under Windows 95.

Using Menus and Dialog Boxes in Microsoft Word

With Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 3.5, NatSpeak started using Microsoft ActiveX Accessibility to add support for voice access to additional menus and dialogs. ActiveX Accessibility is a technology originally introduced by Microsoft to allow screen readers (for blind users) to be able to read menus and dialog boxes in Microsoft applications. However, Dragon NaturallySpeaking has used those same interfaces to voice-enable those applications.

With this feature, it is now possible to control (almost) all menu and dialog boxes in Microsoft Word and other applications in the Microsoft Office suite. Control of menus and dialogs boxes in Word is the same as in other applications. Usually you say "Click <menuName> or "Click <controlName>" to activate the named item.

Microsoft ActiveX Accessibility only works in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000. It does not work in Windows NT 4.0. Therefore, voice access to menus and dialog boxes in Microsoft Office will not work in Windows NT.

Natural Language Commands for Microsoft Word

New in version 3.0 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking are natural language commands for Microsoft Word 97. Don't let the phrase "natural language" confuse you. The term natural language here is used to describe commands which are less structured (thus more natural) then the usual command and control found in speech recognition systems. (Dragon was not the first company to use the phrase "natural language" to describe their extensive command vocabulary. It is not a very precise term.)

Basically, the natural language commands are a set of command and control phrases which allow you to format your document in Microsoft Word. There are over half a billion different phrases in the command set for Microsoft Word 97 in version 3.0 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This means that most of the time, when you say something which seems like it would be a command, it is.

For example, to underline a section of text, you could do any of the following things:

• "Underline That"
• "Underline Next Three Words"
• "Make the Last Three Words Underlined"
• "Format the Selection Underlined"
• "Turn It Underlined"
• etc.

In general, Dragon's natural language commands cover most text and paragraph formatting, plus some other additional functionality like creating tables and changing margins.

The natural language commands are currently restricted to Microsoft Word 97. They are not available in WordPerfect or in Dragon NaturallySpeaking's own editor. They all available, however, in all versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

The natural language commands are implemented using a combination of grammars in the global.dvc file, and a special DLL which interfaces with Microsoft Word. This means that users of the Professional Edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking can modify what you say to make the formatting occur or add additional commands with similar syntax.

At a future time, I will list all of the different things that you can say in Dragon NaturallySpeaking's natural language commands for Microsoft Word 97. For now, I will simply list the types of font styles which are available (which give you an example of the types of things that you can do).

FontStyle

"Black", "Blue", "Bright Green", "Dark Blue", "Dark Red", "Dark Yellow", "Gray", "Green", "Pink", "Red", "Teal", "Turquoise", "Violet", "White", "Yellow", "No Highlight", "Bold", "Bolded", "Bolding", "Double Strike Through", "Embossed", "Engraved", "Hidden", "Italics", "Italicized", "Shadowed", "Superscript", "Subscript", "Underline", "Underlined", "Double Underlined", "Wavy Underlined", "Thick Underlined", "Strike Through", "Bigger", "Larger", "Smaller", "Much Bigger", "Much Larger", "Much Smaller", "a Little Bigger", "a Little Larger", "a Little Smaller", "a Lot Bigger", "a Lot Larger", "a Lot Smaller", "Normal", "Default", "Plain", "Plain Text", "Regular", "Lowercase", "No Caps", "Initial Caps", "Capitals", "Capitalized", "Caps", "Uppercase", or "Small Caps"

ParaStyle

"Centered", "Center Aligned", "Left Aligned", "Right Aligned", "Left Justified", "Right Justified", "Justified", "Indented", "Outdented", "Bulleted", "Numbered", "a Bulleted List", "a Numbered List", "Bullet Style", "Single Spaced", "Double Spaced", "One Column", "Two Column", "Two Columns", "Three Column", "Three Columns", "Four Column", "Four Columns", "Five Column", or "Five Columns"

Personal opinion: In general, I find the natural language commands useful, but somewhat overrated. Having natural language commands does not solve the fundamental problem that if you do not know what something is called, you can not effect it. For example, if you do not know that drawing a line through text is called "strike through", then you will be unable to format the text this way. Saying "Draw a Line through the Next Three Words" does not work.

On the other hand, Dragon has gone to great lengths to make the command set intuitive once you know some of the basic commands. For example, I know that beginning the natural language commands with the word "Make", followed by the name of some object followed by the name of some formatting style will almost always work. So, therefore, there is very little that I have to remember.

Also, I find that using the numbered objects is not very useful. For example, I almost never say "Capitalize the Next Three Words", because I am never sure that I counted the words properly. Instead, with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 3.0, you'll find that the most useful way to format your text is to use the command "Select <text> Through <text>", followed by a command which begins "Make That <style>".

In general, the natural language commands work very well. Most of this is because of the improved discrimination between commands and dictation in Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 3.0. If you say a command, it will almost always recognize as a command and execute. On the other hand, if you say something which is like a command but is not exactly a command, it will almost always type. And this is the expected behavior.

WordPerfect

Starting with version 3.0 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (?), the NaturalWord feature of Dragon NaturallySpeaking was enhanced to provide the same level of integration with Corel WordPerfect that was previously available with Microsoft Word. This means that users of Corel WordPerfect will also be able to dictate directly into WordPerfect using Dragon NaturallySpeaking including the ability to correct and edit by voice.

The natural language commands described above, however, are only available for Microsoft Word and do not work in Corel WordPerfect.

This web page (http://www.synapseadaptive.com/joel/NaturalWord.html) was last modified on March 22, 2000. The contents of this page are (c) Copyright 1998-1999 by Joel Gould. All Rights Reserved. See Copyright Information for more details.