I want to build a voice interface onto Filemaker 13. It would use voice commands to search / find records, convert field text from text to speech, then play back the audio one field at a time. Any ideas where to start? Anyone know how to do it?

Although it's possible on a Mac to convert text to speech, converting speech to text is not possible as I understand. On Windoze I doubt either is possible, but I can't be certain.

You can do some of this using Dragon Dictate. I would like to see other ideas on this too.

Although it's possible on a Mac to convert text to speech, converting speech to text is not possible as I understand.

 

I have never used it myself, but Macs have had built-in voice control for over 20 years now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakable_items

And it still is clunky. 

I'm using Naturally Speaking on Win 8.1 and it converts voice to text very well. I use Captivate on Win 8.1, which has a text-to-voice function that also works well. So, Windoze does support voice-to-text and text-to-voice and it does a pretty good job. The concept is to develop something like Naturally Speaking to interact with Filemaker databases, then convert text fields to audio for playback. Kinda like attaching an interactive voice response system to Filemaker. I think it would require VXML. Who can do it? 

And it still is clunky. 

 

Perhaps, but "clunky" is not "impossible" and a whole lot better than nothing. And it's not like they're not working on it:

http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acquires-speech-recognition-firm-novauris-for-siri-help/

I want to build a voice interface onto Filemaker 13. It would use voice commands to search / find records, convert field text from text to speech, then play back the audio one field at a time. Any ideas where to start? Anyone know how to do it?

 

I am not sure what exactly you are looking for. This cannot be accomplished by using the tools provided in Filemaker to developers. It may be possible (I don't really know) to build as a plugin. For starters, you would need to know how to build a Filemaker plugin AND how to convert speech to text. I haven't got a clue in either but if I did, I would probably seek to to invest such skills in something more feasible (and profitable).