Hi Rowland,

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has dictation built in, but it requires an Internet connection to get to the Siri servers for "translation." You put your cursor into a field or other text entry area, press the hotkey to activate Dictation, and speak. The translated text is entered into the box. However, it will not interpret your "new record" command or your "tab" command.

There is a product called Dragon Dictate that will do what you want, including the commands, but it costs $200 and each user must "train" it with their voice. Here's an article explaining the differences:
http://www.macworld.com/article/2014417/mountain-lion-dictation-versus-dragon-dictate.html

I have used Dragon Dictate and it works well. There is definitely a learning curve for making the best use of it, but it works as advertised.

--
Steve Moore
Cumberland, Maine


On Mar 19, 2013, at 5:00 AM, Rowland Carson wrote:

> I'm wondering if it would be practical to transcribe manuscript data into a FileMaker Pro file using voice recognition software. I'm hoping it would be possible to say something like:
> 
> new record, 15 May 1947, tab, 7.35, tab, blue, tab, 3 hours 22 minutes 7 seconds, new record, 3 June 1947, tab, 10.78, tab, yellow, tab, 1 hour 11 minutes 45 seconds, new record ......
> 
> and have the voice-recognition software do all the equivalent keyboard actions to get the data into the FMP file. This seems as though it should be much faster and less effort than typing it myself.
> 
> Does anyone have any experience of using any make of voice recognition software with FMP in this way? Anything recommended, or to be avoided? Any gotchas?
> 
> I'm using FMP 11 on a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6.8.
> 
> in friendship
> 
> Rowland
> 
> | Rowland Carson          ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...
> | <[log in to unmask]>            http://www.rowlandcarson.org.uk
> | Skype, Twitter: rowland_carson      Facebook: Rowland Carson
> | pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/rowlandcarson