WinDictator:   Dictate in Windows, get the text typed in Linux

I've been using WinDictator for a while now and am very happy with it, happy enough that I really haven't done any work on it for over a year. The work that still remains to be done, unfortunately, is the type of work that makes it easy for people other than the software author to use it. I'm finally doing an alpha release, but with some reluctance because the installation process is such a pain.

Once you get the software installed on your Linux computer and whatever real or virtual box you have running some variant of that other operating system, it is a joy to use. One word of warning, though. It occasionally freezes my X server for no apparent reason. Obviously, that can be a pain.

You can now download ZIP file that should be suitable for installation on both the Linux and Windows computers. It's pretty big because it includes a complete build environment for a hack I made of GNU Xnee to report on keystroke entry on the Linux side. That's important to avoid bunching your keystrokes together and getting dictaed tex tha loks like hi.

The area that could use the most work in making WinDictator easy to distribute and install is getting a simple custom makefile written that only includes and compiles the parts of GNU Xnee that I actually need, without all of the automake bloat. If anybody knows anything about GNU make and wants to look into this, be my guest. I'd be happy to incorporate and credit your contributions under the GPL.

-Ed Suominen, July 27, 2007