spc-plugin

This is the Eclipse plugin for the spoken language programming environment in Benjamin M. Gordon's PhD dissertation. See the spc-compiler repository on github for the matching compiler.

Prerequisites

• spc-compiler, the compiler backend for this plugin.
• ANTLR 3.5.2 from antlr3.org.
• A recent Eclipse IDE with the egit, Java, and PDE plugins. Fedora's 2018-12 and the upstream 2019-03 are known to work. The "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" edition includes most of what you need, but you will need to add the "Eclipse plug-in development environment" plugin through the software updater.
• CMU Sphinx 4. This has been tested with the prebuilt 1.0 beta5.

Building

First, follow the build instructions for the spc-compiler repository from github and make sure you can run all the tests.

Clone this project somewhere, e.g. ~/projects/spc-plugin. Import ~/projects/spc-plugin into the same workspace as the spc-compiler project with the File -> Import -> Git wizard. Be sure to choose the "Import existing Eclipse projects" option at the appropriate step so that it reads the existing metadata. This should create a project called EclipsePlugin.

Copy antlr-3.5.2-complete.jar from spc-compiler/lib into lib. Then right-click /spc-compiler/spc.jardesc and choose "Create JAR". This will create /EclipsePlugin/lib/spc.jar. You will need to redo this step whenever you change the compiler backend.

Download Sphinx 4 from Sourceforge and unzip and build it somewhere, e.g. ~/projects/sphinx4. In a terminal:

$ cd ~/projects/sphinx4
$ cd lib
$ bash jsapi.sh
$ cd ..
$ ant

When you run the jsapi.sh command inside ~/projects/sphinx4/lib, you will have to agree to the license and then it generates a working jsapi.jar file.

After building Sphinx, you will also need to copy these files from ~/projects/sphinx4/lib into lib inside the EclipsePlugin project:

• sphinx4.jar
• jsapi.jar
• jsapi-1.0-base.jar
• WSJ_8gau_13dCep_16k_40mel_130Hz_6800Hz.jar

Make sure your copy of the WSJ jar has the /dict/fillerdict file in it. This file was present in Sphinx beta5, but may no longer be there if you build Sphinx beta6.

Now leave your terminal and head back to Eclipse. Since this is an Eclipse plugin, it builds in Eclipse. You need to set the SPHINX_HOME classpath variable to wherever you put Sphinx:

1. Window -> Preferences -> Java -> Build Path -> Classpath Variables
2. Click the New... button.
3. Call your new variable SPHINX_HOME and point it to ~/projects/sphinx4 or wherever you unpacked Sphinx earlier. Hit OK.
4. Rebuild your whole project after hitting Apply and Close.

Once you have all this in place, Eclipse should build the plugin without any ongoing tweaking.

Running

To run the project, switch to the "Plug-In Development" perspective. You may have to do Window -> Open Perspective -> Other... if you haven't used it before.

Double-click the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF entry in the Package Explorer, then click the green Run arrow in the plugin editor that opens. This will launch a new copy of Eclipse with your plugin loaded. Once you've done this, a normal run configuration is created that will run your plugin without having the MANIFEST.MF file open.

The plugin adds a new "Spoken Programming" menu and several corresponding toolbar buttons. Before you can begin dictation, you need to add the "Spoken Programming" view by going to Window -> Show View -> Other... and finding it in the list. Then create a file with a .spk extension and click the "start dictation" button while that file is open in an editor. To stop dictation, say "stop listening" or click the "stop dictation" button.

The language syntax matches the syntax accepted by the compiler, with a few additional editing commands. Read the .gram files in the lib directory to see the exact syntax.

License

Some portions of this code came from demo code in the CMU Sphinx project and are covered by their license. Everything else is released under the GPL 3.