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View Full Version : Voice Command Hacking


Robb Bates
03-12-2004, 07:39 PM
I was playing around with MS Voice Command and got it to read an ebook to me. Or at least part of it.

Here's how I did it.

Under Program Files/Voice Command there is a file called wordsubst.csv. It is used to substitute the correct words or phrases. For example, when voice command encounters the text "000" it will say "thousand" instead of "zero zero zero".

So I copied a chuck of text out of an ebook, pasted it into WordPad and deleted all commas. You have to get rid of all of them or voice command won't work.

Then copy the wordsubst.csv file onto your desktop machince, and open it in WordPad. Add an entry to the wordsubst.csv file something like this:

...
tatu,tattoo
tts,Graham began to work on his math problems
tyrese,tye reese
U2,U 2
...

The word before the comma is what voice command looks for and the word(s) after the comma is what it will say in place of it.

So in this example, when it find "tts" (I arbitrarily picked that to mean Text-To-Speech) it will say "Graham began to work ..."

Then save the file back to your PPC. Make a backup copy of your original wordsubst.csv file first.

Now make a new appointment with the subject as "tts". Then reset your device to let voice command scan the modified file. Then say "What's my next appointment?" So now when voice command gets to the "tts" appointment, instead of saying "t.t.s." it will read the text you put in there.

I have no idea what limits there are on the size of text you can replace, or how it impacts memory consumption.

And of course, do this at you own risk. I assume no responsibility when you screw up your PPC.

This little hack goes to show you how much Voice Command could and hopefully will eventually do.

Robb Bates