bowles@MICA.BERKELEY.EDU (Jeff A. Bowles) (01/24/89)
Someone proposes making devices that recognize, no, not spoken words, but spelled-out words. "It takes me how long to say this?" - spoke at just under 3 seconds Same, each letter spoken - takes just under 8 seconds "It takes me how long to say this?" - typed in just over 5 seconds I wasn't intentionally trying to stack the deck, and probably a better test is involves someone else using a clock (or a decent recorder). But I speak faster than I pronounce each letter of the corresponding words, because there are less syllables to just say the word. It's the Dennis Ritchie school of abbreviation: "why use 'ref' when '*' will do?" ------------ And for me, there's an awful lot better way to say "middle-C as sounded by a piano" than to type it or to speak it or to spell it - I'd say that the best way is to walk up to a piano, find the key, and hit it. Some might say that a piano keyboard is just an input device that furnishes many abbreviations for what's really happening. They're right, even if the keyboard generates a few MIDI sequences instead of causing air molecules to vibrate. ------------ And before I get off my soapbox, I will point out that the mouse with the various forms of, what's the buzzword, pull-down menus, is nothing more than an input device that furnishes abbreviations for what's really happening, and even surrenders to the programmer what abbreviations are available. Jeff Bowles