Dragon 8 and punctuation Thread poster: Patricia Lane
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I am reposting this here from the software forum.
When I Dragon in French, it always puts on additional space before a period, fails to add a space after a period and never capitalizes the first word of the new sentence. Voice-recognition works well, and I have few other punctuation problems.
I do not have this problem in English.
I have scoured the manual and a user groups and have not found an answer or solution.
If any savvy Dragon users her... See more I am reposting this here from the software forum.
When I Dragon in French, it always puts on additional space before a period, fails to add a space after a period and never capitalizes the first word of the new sentence. Voice-recognition works well, and I have few other punctuation problems.
I do not have this problem in English.
I have scoured the manual and a user groups and have not found an answer or solution.
If any savvy Dragon users here could help, I would appreciate it.
Patricia ▲ Collapse
| | | | Endre Both 
Germany
Local time: 00:50
English to German
| Try removing punctuation customization / create new user | Oct 30, 2007 |
Hi Patricia,
Dragon does have occasional problems with spacing and capitalisation (often resulting from varying degrees of support for different applications/text frames), but if you experience significant difference between two profiles on the same installation, this might be a result of a corruption of Dragon's punctuation settings in the offending profile.
Have you tried creating a new user? If it works OK with a new user, then it's probably down to incorrect customi... See more Hi Patricia,
Dragon does have occasional problems with spacing and capitalisation (often resulting from varying degrees of support for different applications/text frames), but if you experience significant difference between two profiles on the same installation, this might be a result of a corruption of Dragon's punctuation settings in the offending profile.
Have you tried creating a new user? If it works OK with a new user, then it's probably down to incorrect customization in your current profile; you could try removing custom "words" that include punctuation in the Vocabulary Editor (I vaguely remember reading that messing with punctuation in DNS was risky).
If a new profile doesn't work properly either, then the phenomenon you describe might indeed be a specific glitch of the French version (which I'm not familiar with). But this would be rather unusual (and should have left traces in user groups).
Have you tried writing to Nuance's support?
Endre ▲ Collapse
| | | | Patricia Lane
France
Local time: 00:50
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks, Endre... Yes, I tried creating a new user... Same problem.. and just in French!
I'll keep scrounging.....
Patricia
| | | | Endre Both
Germany
Local time: 00:50
English to German
| Get used to "Cap" and "No-Space" :-( | Oct 30, 2007 |
Hi Patricia,
That's too bad. It's hard to imagine but maybe Nuance built in some bugs when adapting the software to French punctuation (which is a bit different from English) -- maybe some French users of DNS 8 could relate their experience.
Is the problem the same in all applications?
One immediate solution (which I adapted because I'm having space problems of my own in DNS 9) is to get used to starting sentences with "Cap" and to say "No-Space" (or rather... See more Hi Patricia,
That's too bad. It's hard to imagine but maybe Nuance built in some bugs when adapting the software to French punctuation (which is a bit different from English) -- maybe some French users of DNS 8 could relate their experience.
Is the problem the same in all applications?
One immediate solution (which I adapted because I'm having space problems of my own in DNS 9) is to get used to starting sentences with "Cap" and to say "No-Space" (or rather the French equivalent) before punctuation.
Or, you could try "brute force" (against my previous advice of not messing with punctuation and customize the settings of the full stop to a) not insert a space before, b) insert a space after and c) capitalise the next word. Maybe you can try it first with your newly created test profile...
To edit the settings of a word in detail (rather than selecting just one setting in the Properties panel of the Vocabulary Editor), you can try VocEdit, which I have found very useful for some problems and a lot quicker than the Vocabulary Editor:
http://www.synapseadaptive.com/joel/voceditautilityaprogram_m.htm
Endre ▲ Collapse
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Patricia Lane
France
Local time: 00:50
French to English
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TOPIC STARTER
Hi again Endre,
I basically only use Dragon in Word and Outlook, so I don't know about other applications. The glitch is the same in both. Overall, I find Dragon deals better with English as it has fewer grammar-spelling issues to worry about! So I guess I'll just keep doing what I have been, that is to say more extensive proofreading and correcting once I'm done with the voice dictation part of it!
Thanks for you help in any event!
Patricia
| | | | | Did it work at one time? | Oct 30, 2007 |
If so, there could be a couple of really basic, annoying things going on.
My first step would be to open the vocabulary editor and use the filter at the bottom to display "custom words" only. Check and see if there isn't a "." in the list somewhere with a red asterisk next to it. If there is, delete it. It was added by Dragon from one of your corrections (another example of programmers being far too clever, in my opinion) and is getting in the way of recognition of the true, built-i... See more If so, there could be a couple of really basic, annoying things going on.
My first step would be to open the vocabulary editor and use the filter at the bottom to display "custom words" only. Check and see if there isn't a "." in the list somewhere with a red asterisk next to it. If there is, delete it. It was added by Dragon from one of your corrections (another example of programmers being far too clever, in my opinion) and is getting in the way of recognition of the true, built-in period.
If that fails to turn anything up, find the period in the vocabulary (it will be towards the top of the list in the non-alphabetic section), open its properties and check that it is set to "inserts spacing and capitalizes the following word."
If that still doesn't fix it, then I'd try to create a substitute vocabulary word and see if there is something more fundamental that is messing up. Hijack a word you would normally never say, and under "properties" give it the alternative written form of "." and the correct spacing/capitalization for a period. Train it, and then try using it in a sentence.
If it sill misbehaves you might consider reinstalling. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Patricia Lane
France
Local time: 00:50
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Hi Richard,
This in fact was a clean install. I had cleaned my HD and reinstalled the OS some months ago and hadn't yet reinstalled Dragon. It had behaved that way in the past though.
Inspired by the suggestions kindly offered this morning, I went into the commands inspector area and found everything related to "point". The programming for it as a punctuation mark was indeed correct, but seems that just clicking on it and reconfirming did the trick.
So o... See more Hi Richard,
This in fact was a clean install. I had cleaned my HD and reinstalled the OS some months ago and hadn't yet reinstalled Dragon. It had behaved that way in the past though.
Inspired by the suggestions kindly offered this morning, I went into the commands inspector area and found everything related to "point". The programming for it as a punctuation mark was indeed correct, but seems that just clicking on it and reconfirming did the trick.
So on that score, THANK YOU all!
After a few hours of use, I recall why I hadn't felt reinstalling Dragon was a priority.
It crashes all the time, with 3 different behavior patterns:
1. it just freezes completely and I have to use ctl+alt+sup to force Dragon to shut down totaly.
2. I get an error message that flies by and it closes in a flash (the last one five minutes ago gave me the following on the Dragon log:
An engine sink failed to unregister itself.
11:02:37 COM returned an unexpected error code:
Details are RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE
11:02:37 Exception at line 435 in d:\work\el4\natsdk\utils\inc\engsink.h
3. Or, POOF! total crash, blue screen flies by, computer reboots and runs chkdsk, all is fine. In this case, absolutely nothing in the Dragon log and no alerts, failures or problems appear in the computer's events log either.
My computer is spitshine clean, not a bug, worm, or other thug in sight and no other malfunctions.....
I would really like to use Dragon more regularly (right hand and wrist problems) but it has never been terribly stable or reliable!
If you have any brilliant ideas why this could be, I am all ears!
Many many thanks
Patricia ▲ Collapse
| | | | | No idea why such behaviour | Oct 30, 2007 |
Endre Both wrote:
...maybe some French users of DNS 8 could relate their experience.
But for the record, I have never had problems with DNS 8 Preferred in French on XP and whatever application (from the IE address bar to Outlook to TagEditor to Notepad to SDLX).
Word will capitalize the first letter (it's not Dragon that does it, it's part of the autoformat in Word), but TagEditor and other programs that don't have an autoformat feature will not (so I say En-Maj) unless after a "point" said in continuous dictation ("...après lui point mais alors qu'il..." yields "...après lui. Mais alors qu'il...").
And apart from adding new words, I do very little customisation with DNS. I hardly learned how to tweak it as it worked fine straight out of the box.
Sorry to hear about your trouble. Would you happen to run Vista, by any chance?
Philippe
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Patricia Lane
France
Local time: 00:50
French to English
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TOPIC STARTER
I am on XP pro SP2 and shall be avoiding Vista as long as I possibly can (just upgrading so much software would break the bank!!)
I envy you! Dragon has always been nutty with me. At least the "point" problem is solved. Now if I can figure out how to keep it from glitching/crashing, I'd be thrilled. I do need it at this point, I need to preserve what I can with my hand!
Patricia
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Patricia Lane wrote:
After a few hours of use, I recall why I hadn't felt reinstalling Dragon was a priority.
It crashes all the time, with 3 different behavior patterns:
1. it just freezes completely and I have to use ctl+alt+sup to force Dragon to shut down totaly.
Do you mean that, after a few hours use, it will freeze completely?
Because that happens to me too. In fact, sometimes after just a couple of hours.
I just restart it, and carry on.
I tell you this not as the ideal solution, but simply perhaps so you have the comfort of knowing this situation is not unique to you (I too am Windows XP).
(Conversely, I do not experience the other 2 situations you describe.)
| | | | | Is it a memory issue? | Oct 30, 2007 |
That's the only thing that I've ever found to influence Dragon's performance. I have 2 GB on my computer and would be reluctant to run the DNS/Trados/Word/Custom add-ins cocktail that I use to translate with anything less. Of late, even 2 GB is feeling a bit confining (but that's probably because I'm experimenting with this large custom-written program to provide a voice-activated alternative to Trados' placeables and MultiTerm and it's taxing resources--but so much better than $#^% Trados!).... See more That's the only thing that I've ever found to influence Dragon's performance. I have 2 GB on my computer and would be reluctant to run the DNS/Trados/Word/Custom add-ins cocktail that I use to translate with anything less. Of late, even 2 GB is feeling a bit confining (but that's probably because I'm experimenting with this large custom-written program to provide a voice-activated alternative to Trados' placeables and MultiTerm and it's taxing resources--but so much better than $#^% Trados!).
Dragon 8 was very stable for me on 3 different computers in 2 different languages and 3 different chip architectures. Dragon 9.5 never produces system-level crashes, but will sometimes commit harakiri when working in TagEditor. Experts in another forum tell me this is because my custom command file has become corrupt, which is probably true since I've got several iterations of commands to control TagEditor laying around, some referencing non-existent DLLs and import files, and I've just been too lazy to clean it up. (Better to curse and have another cup of coffee while rebooting.)
But apart from what I've done to it myself, I've never had a problem with Dragon. The fact that it's regularly misbehaving for you says there is something else going on. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Yaotl Altan
Mexico
Local time: 16:50
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
+ ...
It's a shame I am not able to work with Dragon in Windows Vista
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Endre Both
Germany
Local time: 00:50
English to German
| How much RAM does DNS actually use on your system, Richard? | Oct 31, 2007 |
Richard Walker wrote:
I have 2 GB on my computer and would be reluctant to run the DNS/Trados/Word/Custom add-ins cocktail that I use to translate with anything less.
How much RAM does DNS take up on your system when running, Richard? I've never seen either DNS 8 or 9 using more than 160 MB on my system, which seems to indicate that at least with an out-of-the-box system, RAM should rarely be a bottleneck.
I'd love it if DNS used more of my 1.5GB of RAM to be a bit more responsive, but I'm afraid the real constraint on my system is the processor (Pentium M 1.4MHz).
Endre
| | | | | How the dragon eats more RAM | Nov 4, 2007 |
Endre Both wrote:
How much RAM does DNS take up on your system when running, Richard? I've never seen either DNS 8 or 9 using more than 160 MB on my system, which seems to indicate that at least with an out-of-the-box system, RAM should rarely be a bottleneck.
Dragon 9.5 pro is coming in at about 300,000 K at the moment, but as I said, that includes my own add-ons that end up holding quite a lot of data in memory. When you combine that with Word (more custom add-ons, I'm afraid), Trados, Outlook, IE and then all those other little processes known and unknown that sit in memory taking up space, there's not a lot left over.
Even before I began to really tinker with it and tack on all the other stuff (created, I might add, because Trados is such a dimwitted program), I found that Dragon would sooner or later hit a wall where it wasn't getting enough memory and its performance started to slide. I was quite amazed after a RAM boost at how much better its performance was. The wall is still there, but it's farther out--unless I keep closing the distance by asking the program to do more.
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