Hi!

 simon released its first alpha today.

You can download the .tar.bz2 at sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=190872).

It _should_ be able to:

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•  Import Hadifix and Wiktionary dictionaries
  both including pronunciation (as well as automatic    XSampa-conversion when importing a Wiktionary dictionary) and terminals
• Compiling the language model
  we cheated and looked at your model-creation script. But we rewrote all those little perl/bash scripts in C and it now is even a bit faster *brag* :P
• Record training samples and automatically add them to your prompts file
  Training texts can be automatically generated by selecting words to train or imported from .txt files or from the internet (the internet part is for now only a feature-demonstration as there is only one text available online)
• Maintain a main and a shadow dictionary/vocab
  performance reasons - only the "used" words are in the main dictionary/vocab
• Add new words with a shadow-dict lookup;
  so you can import many dictionaries and keep them in your shadow dict, so they don't impact your performance but have simon automatically look up new words when you are trying to add them
• Remove words
  Either move them (back) to the shadow lexicon or delete them completely which also includes all training samples containing that word
• Import of Trainingdata
  Can import Trainingsdata if it is appropriately named: this_is_a_test.wav for example; All samples will be processed with a configurable "effect-stack" to apply normalisation / downmixing etc. before importing (this is pretty much untested - I wouldn't recommend it for real-life use for now)
• Type whatever Julius recognizes
• Simulate shortcuts
  you can for example assign "simon run" to Alt+F2
• Run Programs / Open places
  you can import program / places over an convenient wizard
• Simulate mouseclicks
  simon Desktopgrid wil present you with a grid of 9 areas which can then be narrowed down to click precicely what you want - pretty basic for now but it works
  This also includes fake AND real transparency (when used on a composite-enabled desktop; configurable)
• Import Grammar from personal texts
  This is especially useful after importing huge dictionaries
• Merge Terminals
  To make it easy to import dictionaries and integrate them with the current grammar
• Password protection for vital system parts
  as we are developing for children you can lock down everything that is not needed for normal operation
• Guided First-Run-Setup

Stuff that is not working but should be:

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• Synchronising the language models with juliusd - the only possible way for now is to start juliusd on the same machine as simon and synchronize it manually; (this will take some time though)
• Use AT-SPI and MSAA to pick up other applications gui and let simon control them

Stuff in active development (besides bugfixing, etc.):

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• Making the gui of simon completely controllable by voice - this is achieved by an extension of QT (SimonTableWidget, SimonListWidget, etc.); It is already working (a bit) but there are obvious bugs...

However, all this hasn't _really_ been tested with a real model and the list is more like an "what would work if there were no bugs at all".

You offered us your help some time ago - and we'd really appreciate it, if you could try out the current state of simon and give your comments. Please keep in mind that this is still an alpha version so it is not really stable and ABSOLUTELY not suited for productive use. Think of it as an (hopefully impressive ^^) tech-demo.

Looking forward to your feedback!

-- bedahr (aka Peter Grasch)

Project administrator

--- (Edited on 1/18/2008 9:50 am [GMT-0600] by bedahr) ---