Current work is in progress to extend the capabilities of the speech environment in this manner. Part of that work involves integrating continuous speech with discrete speech. Computer to human speech interactions can be characterized as both discrete speech and continuous speech phases. This phase consists of many small utterances separated by silence. Users controlling a computer typically utter discrete phrases.
Users dictating usually speak in increasing longer phrases, or continuously.
Continuous speech recognition engines became widely and relatively cheaply available recently. However, these products are not currently suitable for complete command and control of a computer. Some are lacking are hands-free correction abilities. Those that provide hands-free correction are still difficult to use, in that they allow the user to get into a state where only certain obscure commands are recognized. Another method of interaction is needed in order to provide a completely hands-free environment.