How to enable free diction speech recognition in VB6 using SAPI

Question

Recently I have been attempting to create a chatbot for school, and one of the features I wanted was speech recognition. Unfortunately, due to the deprecated nature of VB6, there are very few tutorials on using SAPI for speech recognition with VB6, and none at all for enabling free diction (simply speaking without a grammar set and converting speech into text).

Answer 1

Automation Interfaces and Objects (SAPI 5.4) has the documentation.

Trivial example:

Option Explicit

'See "Automation Interfaces and Objects (SAPI 5.4)" at MSDN.

Private WithEvents RC As SpeechLib.SpInProcRecoContext
Private RG As SpeechLib.ISpeechRecoGrammar

Private Sub Form_Load()
    With New SpeechLib.SpInprocRecognizer
        Set RC = .CreateRecoContext()
        Set .AudioInput = .GetAudioInputs().Item(0)
    End With
    With RC
        .EventInterests = SRERecognition Or SREFalseRecognition
        Set RG = .CreateGrammar()
    End With
    RG.DictationSetState SGDSActive
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Resize()
    If WindowState <> vbMinimized Then
        Text1.Move 0, 0, ScaleWidth, ScaleHeight
    End If
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Unload(Cancel As Integer)
    RG.DictationSetState SGDSInactive
End Sub

Private Sub RC_FalseRecognition( _
    ByVal StreamNumber As Long, _
    ByVal StreamPosition As Variant, _
    ByVal Result As SpeechLib.ISpeechRecoResult)

    With Text1
        .SelStart = &H7FFF
        .SelText = "False Rec: "
        .SelText = Result.PhraseInfo.GetText()
        .SelText = vbNewLine
    End With
End Sub

Private Sub RC_Recognition( _
    ByVal StreamNumber As Long, _
    ByVal StreamPosition As Variant, _
    ByVal RecognitionType As SpeechLib.SpeechRecognitionType, _
    ByVal Result As SpeechLib.ISpeechRecoResult)

    With Text1
        .SelStart = &H7FFF
        .SelText = "Rec: "
        .SelText = Result.PhraseInfo.GetText()
        .SelText = vbNewLine
    End With
End Sub