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- SECTION FIFTEEN
- PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
-
- 15.1: INTRODUCTION
-
- Now that you've been introduced to just about all of Vocal-Eyes' wide range
- of speech features, let's take a little time to "mix and match" them in ways
- that will best serve you. Often throughout this manual, we have used the
- Word Perfect word processing program to assist in our examples. Word Perfect
- is a very popular applications software package, and we have felt that even
- if you are not using Word Perfect presently, you would be able to take much
- of what you've learned from our examples and apply it to your own favorite
- applications programs.
-
- In this section of your Vocal-Eyes users' guide we'll take a closer and more
- detailed look at Word Perfect. We'll concentrate on Version 5.X, though most
- of what we'll be talking about will apply equally well to Versions 4.1 and
- 4.2. We'll begin with the basic, non-talking software itself, and we'll show
- you, piece by piece, how to build a voice environment that will allow you to
- use Word Perfect as well as any sighted user. Work along with us, or you can
- load the WP.SET file we've included on your Vocal-Eyes master diskette. If
- you're not currently using Word Perfect, read on anyway. You're sure to
- learn a few tricks that will come in handy when constructing voice
- environments for the programs you use.
-
- We have supplied you with several preconfigured .SET files - WordPerfect
- included. Remember, if you startup WordPerfect by typing WP, the autoloading
- feature of Vocal-Eyes will automatically load WP.SET, WP.KEY which have been
- supplied. Therefore, WordPerfect will be speaking great when you first enter
- it.
-
- 15.2: THE PROGRAM ITSELF
-
- If you've tried using Word Perfect already, you've undoubtedly noticed that
- it doesn't "talk" very well on its own. This presents us with both a
- challenge and an opportunity: the challenge to get it talking and the
- opportunity to make it talk only when there's something we really want to
- hear.
-
- Do you have Word Perfect loaded into your PC's memory? If so, take a moment
- to enter Review Mode, or use one of your read full screen hot keys to look
- things over. One of the first things you're likely to notice about the
- program is how empty the screen seems. There's a smattering of information
- way down at the bottom, but other than that the screen seems entirely blank.
- Type a word or two into Word Perfect and examine your screen again. You will
- notice that the words, or text, you just typed, will appear in this
- previously blank area of the screen. There will be exceptions, as you will
- learn as you spend time working with Word Perfect, but for the most part this
- is how your screen will appear: your text occupying the top 24 lines of your
- screen and Word Perfect status and program information occupying the 25th.
-
- 15.3: CREATING THE BASIC WINDOWS
-
- As we mentioned in the last topic, basically, the Word Perfect screen can be
- divided into two parts: the first 24-line text window and the 25th line,
- which displays status and program information. As you've probably already
- guessed the first thing we'll want to do in constructing our voice
- environment is to create two screen windows: one to read lines 1-24 and a
- second to read line 25. Enter Review Mode and create both of these windows
- now. Define Window 0 to read the first 24 lines and Window 9 to read screen
- line 25. Set both windows to "Neutral."
-
- Why did we choose these particular windows to set? Well, since Word Perfect
- doesn't use DOS screen service to display its information, we don't need to
- concern ourselves with making sure we place our "Silent" windows in front of
- our "Speak" window. We can use the "Neutral" setting for both of these Word
- Perfect windows. We choose to use Windows 0 and 9 for the simple reason that
- for most, right-handed users, the ALT-0 and ALT-9 keys are convenient to
- reach. If you are left-handed, you could just as easily have selected
- Windows #1 and #2. Alternatively, you could have used the Hot Keys menu to
- reassign your "read text window" and "read status line" window keys to ALT-T
- and ALT-S for text and status, or CTRL-T and CTRL-S, or any key combinations
- that make sense to you and that are not currently assigned to other hot key
- functions.
-
- Have you got your "Read text" and "Read status line" windows in place? Go
- ahead and type some text. Use your read character, word, line, and your new
- "read text window" hot keys to monitor your progress.
-
- Press F10 to save your work. Press your ALT-9 "Read status line" hot key to
- read the status line. Notice that now you are being prompted for a name to
- give your saved file. Your ALT-9 hot key came in pretty handy here, didn't
- it? Perhaps, but wouldn't it be even handier if Vocal-Eyes had let you know
- automatically that there had been a change on the status line?
-
- "Aha!" you say. "I can setup a hyperactive window" and then it will read the
- window every time there's a change on my Word Perfect status line. Go ahead
- and give it a try. Set Hyperactive Window A to "Hyperactive" with the
- coordinates of left=1, top=25, right=80, bottom=25. Setup the window to
- trigger on any change and set the first command to read window A. Now try
- returning to your text and typing in a word or two. Notice that now, every
- time you enter a character, the Word Perfect status line changes to reflect
- your new column position and rereads your "Hyperactive" window yet again.
- Obviously this won't do.
-
- The problem is we are monitoring the entire line 25. If WordPerfect is going
- to change something on the status line, it will probably also change whatever
- is in columns 1-5. Therefore, change the window A coordinates to left=1,
- top=25, right=5, bottom=25. Now what happens? As you type, you are no
- longer getting the status line read as the cursor position changes. Try
- pressing a function key like save document. What happened now? That's
- right, Vocal-Eyes only read the first 5 column of the status line. This is
- because you setup window A to read window A if anything inside changed. We
- need to have it read window 9 instead because it is setup for the full status
- line. This way, Vocal-Eyes will only monitor the first 5 characters of line
- 25 but read the entire line if something changes.
-
- Try typing some more text. Notice that Vocal-Eyes is no longer bothering you
- with a lot of useless repetitions of your status line. Try pressing F10 or
- some other function key that causes a change to your entire status line,
- however, and Vocal-Eyes jumps right in there and let's you know exactly
- what's going on.
-
- Did you press F10? Go ahead, then, and type in a new file name. Again, no
- useless repetitions of the status line. You heard it once when you needed to
- hear it. Of course you can still use your ALT-9 hot key to read or reread
- the status line anytime you like.
-
- 15.4: THE WORDPERFECT CURSOR ADDRESS
-
- Regular Word Perfect 5.X users probably already know that the program uses
- inches instead of column numbers to designate your current cursor position.
- Version 4.1 and 4.2 use column numbers, but they begin with column position,
- or "POS" 10, which places the left margin of your text right up against the
- left-most edge of your display screen. 5.X users can use the SHIFT-F1 Setup
- menu to instruct Word Perfect to display cursor position in the more
- familiar, row and column number format, but this still leaves us with a
- problem. Suppose, for instance, that your cursor is in a position that
- Vocal-Eyes' read address hot key tells you is "C10 L12." Pressing your ALT-9
- read status line hot key, on the other hand, causes Word Perfect to announce
- your current position as Pg 3 Ln 21 POS 20. Word Perfect let's us know where
- we are in our text, whereas Vocal-Eyes can only determine our position on the
- current screen.
-
- How can we instruct Word Perfect to announce our cursor location using the
- Word Perfect format? Easy, we'll simply construct a window to read the part
- of screen line 25 that contains this information. We'll select Window 2 for
- this purpose, and we'll define it with the following coordinates: 40, 25,
- 80, 25. Now, whenever we want to know our Word Perfect cursor address, all
- we have to do is press ALT-2 to read that window.
-
- But why not take things one step further? We're already used to pressing the
- CTRL-A key combination to hear our cursor addressed voiced. Why not go into
- the Hot Keys menu and assign CTRL-A to read Window 2? Remember, though,
- before you can do this you have to "free up" the CTRL-A key by cursoring down
- to the read address hot key setting and pressing the DELETE key to undefine
- this key or press a different keystroke for this feature.
-
- Now, any time during your work with Word Perfect, pressing CTRL-A will still
- announce your current screen location, but it will announce it in the Word
- Perfect Pg Ln POS format.
-
- 15.5: ASSIGNING VOICE FEATURES TO CURSORING KEYS
-
- You'll probably want to keep the default settings for the ARROW keys: i.e.,
- read current character for the LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys, read current line
- for the UP and DOWN ARROW keys, and read current word for the CTRL-LEFT and
- CTRL-RIGHT ARROW keys. Additionally, you'll probably want to have your
- DELETE key read the current character and the BACKSPACE key read the prior
- character as these voice features best reflect how Word Perfect uses these
- keys.
-
- What would you like your TAB and SHIFT-TAB keys read? You'd probably like to
- have them announce your new cursor position, but as we've just discussed the
- Vocal-Eyes screen position rarely if ever matches the more useful, Word
- Perfect cursor address. Of course this situation can be easily rectified if
- we recall that we can instruct Vocal-Eyes to voice any of 10 windows whenever
- we press a key such as the TAB key.
-
- We've already set screen Window 2 to announce our Word Perfect cursor
- position. Now all we have to do is to select the TAB key on the Cursoring
- menu and then press the SPACE BAR or the BACKSPACE key enough times until
- "Speak window" comes up. Press ENTER on this option and Vocal-Eyes will
- prompt you for the window to speak. Type the number 2. Now, every time we
- press the TAB key, Vocal-Eyes will read Window 2 and thereby announce our
- true Word Perfect cursor location.
-
- Do the same thing for the SHIFT-TAB key. And while you're at it, why not go
- ahead and instruct Vocal-Eyes to read Window 2 whenever you press the PgUp or
- PgDn keys as well? Surely you'd like to keep track of where you are when you
- use these keys to move through your document page by page. Or if you prefer,
- you could assign the PgUp and PgDn keys to read window 0, the first 24 lines
- on the screen. This would read the first 24 lines of each new page when you
- press either of the two keys.
-
- And as long as we're talking about cursoring keys, there are a few others you
- might like to set to work well with Word Perfect. CTRL-END is the Word
- Perfect command to delete from the cursor to the end of the line. Why not
- set this key to read your line. This way pressing CTRL-END will instruct
- Word Perfect to delete to the end of your current line, and then Vocal-Eyes
- will read the line for you so you can see how it's been changed. Or, if you
- wish, you can set CTRL-END to read from the cursor position to the end of the
- line. This way, it will read the new information Word Perfect carried up.
- Read the entire line or from the cursor to the end, whichever you like best.
-
- What about CTRL-DELETE and CTRL-BACKSPACE? These keys will delete the
- current word. How about setting these to read the current word. This way
- Vocal-Eyes will always speak the new word under the cursor. You have 46
- possible cursoring keys. You might as well try and use them up.
-
- Remember when we showed you how you could make any key a cursor key by simply
- finding a key on the Cursoring menu you weren't using and then typing in the
- desired key? Well, Word Perfect uses the key pad + and - keys to scroll
- through your document one screen forward or backward at a time. Why not
- replace a couple of unused cursoring keys with the gray + and - minus keys,
- and then press ENTER enough times to cause each of these keys when pressed to
- read your text window 0?
-
- And as long as we're talking about scrolling through your Word Perfect text,
- don't forget to set your Read To End hot key to read your entire document at
- the press of a single key. Why not assign this feature to the ALT-D key, the
- "D" standing for "document read?" Now while in Word Perfect document, you
- can press ALT-D. Vocal-Eyes will start reading your entire document from the
- current cursor position to end. If you wish to stop the reading, simply
- press the ESCAPE key. The reading will stop and your cursor will be in the
- general area of where you stopped. Remember, the Read To End hot key will
- only read the data within your currently active window, so make sure window
- 0 is the current active window. In fact, you may want to leave window 0 the
- active window all the time.
-
- 15.6: THE WP.KEY KEY LABELING DICTIONARY
-
- We've included a key labeling dictionary on your Vocal-Eyes master diskette
- that covers all of the Word Perfect function key commands. It's called
- WP.KEY, and you can load it into Vocal-Eyes by copying it onto your
- Vocal-Eyes start-up diskette or into your Vocal-Eyes hard drive subdirectory
- and then issuing the following command:
-
- VE /kwp
-
- Would you like to see what's in this key labeling dictionary? Go ahead and
- load it into Word Perfect now. Remember, however, that all Vocal-Eyes
- dictionaries have been saved as pure ASCII text files. You can load and save
- them via the Word Perfect F10 and SHIFT F10 commands, but if you do they
- won't be pure ASCII text files anymore. Always remember to use the CTRL-F5
- DOS text files menu to load and save dictionary files.
-
- Would you like your computer to say something different than what's currently
- in the key labeling dictionary? Go ahead and change it. All you have to do
- is to erase the line that tells Vocal-Eyes what to say and replace it with
- the word or words of your choice. Misspellings are perfectly proper in a key
- labeling dictionary, as some times a misspelled word will sound more like the
- word you want than its proper spelling.
-
- 15.7: CHECKING YOUR SPELLING
-
- Word Perfect has excellent spell-checking capabilities. The problem is, it
- tends to display misspelled words in reverse video and then your alternate
- spellings on the bottom half of the screen. At least these use to be
- problems--before you purchased Vocal-Eyes.
-
- To hear the alternate spellings voiced, why not define Window 8 to read
- screen lines 14 through 25? Now, whenever Word Perfect flags a word for
- possible correction, all you have to do is press ALT-8 and you'll hear all
- the suggested spellings for your misspelled word. Why not go one step
- further and setup window 8 to speak and spell. This way, Vocal-Eyes will
- first speak an optional word and than spell it.
-
- As far as reading the flagged misspelled words, which Word Perfect displays
- in reverse video--hey, this is what light bar tracking was born to do!
-
- Do you currently have a completed document on screen? If so, press CTRL-F2
- and select either page or full document spell check. When Word Perfect finds
- a word it thinks is misspelled, enter Review mode and move your cursor to
- that word. The quickest way to do this would be to move the Review cursor to
- the top of the screen and press S to search for the first character with a
- different attribute than the one currently under the cursor. That's right,
- the misspelled word. Press B to set your light bar tracking. Exit Review
- Mode and try your read bar hot key. Did you hear your misspelled word
- announced? Press the read bar hot key again. Vocal-Eyes spelled the word
- this time. Press the read bar hot key a third time. This time, Vocal-Eyes
- spelled the word phonetically. Press ALT-8 to hear Word Perfect's suggested
- corrections. Press the letter preceding the word you want substituted for
- your corrected word, or press 1 to skip once, 2 to skip all occurrences, etc.
-
- How about turning lightbar to on or auto and telling Vocal-Eyes to use the
- current lightbar as the cursor position. This way, as you press the
- previous, current or next for character, word, line, sentence and paragraph,
- they will all be relative to your misspelled word.
-
- See what we mean about turning challenges into opportunities?
-
- (NOTE: Simply as an example, here is an alternative way of finding the
- misspelled word so you could set the light bar tracking attribute. First,
- select option 4: EDIT, from the speller menu. This places your cursor in
- your text at the beginning of your misspelled word. Use your RIGHT ARROW key
- to cursor across the word, or your read current word hot key to determine
- which word is misspelled. Now, press ENTER. This will return you to the
- Word Perfect speller. You can now enter Review Mode and use the "F" find key
- to locate your misspelled word. Once you've found it, press B to set your
- light bar. That's all there is to it. Or you could have placed a Mark at
- the word and instead of finding the word, you could jump directly to the
- marker you just set.)
-
- If you wish, try the user attribute hot key instead of the light bar hot key.
- However, if you use the light bar option, you can spell the word letter by
- letter or spell it phonetically. This cannot be done with the user attribute
- option. Also, you can not use the user attribute as the cursor position.
- Remember, once the light bar attribute is set, you won't have to set it again
- as long as you save your .SET file to disk so you can load it back during you
- next session with Word Perfect.
-
- We could configure this even better by setting up hyperactive windows to load
- new .SET files. For example, once you enter the spell checking section,
- Vocal-Eyes could be told to automatically load WPSPELL.SET. This .SET file
- can be customized to get the spell checking to work as good as you could ever
- imagine. Also, you can instruct Vocal-Eyes to load a new .SET file when you
- enter the list files option or the thesaurus. In fact, you will notice the
- configurations we have supplied with your Vocal-Eyes for WordPerfect will
- indeed jump from .SET to .SET. This happens so quickly you don't even
- realize it is happening. Setting up the environments in the fashion allows
- you to get total control over what should and should not be spoken and in
- what order things should be spoken.
-
- 15.8: MAKING USE OF WORDPERFECT'S COLORS
-
- Even if you have a black-and-white monitor, you may be able to instruct Word
- Perfect to display various information in various colors. Your monitor may
- only display these colors as different shades of gray, but as far as
- Vocal-Eyes sees things your monitor is as colorful as a strutting peacock.
-
- 5.X users can change colors via the SHIFT-F1 setup menu. Users of earlier
- versions of Word Perfect will need to press CTRL-F3 and then select option 4.
-
- Examine this menu and you will notice that Word Perfect can display different
- types of text in different color sets. You may, for instance, choose to
- display normal text as white on blue, bold text as bright white on blue and
- underlined text as black on white. Recall that you have several hot keys
- that read various video attributes such as highlighted text, reverse video,
- etc. Experiment with the various color settings until you find the ones that
- best work with your read attribute hot key assignments.
-
- 15.9: OTHER SETUP OPTIONS
-
- Beside colors, there are many other Word Perfect features you can set that
- will help in your word processing feature. 5.X users will find all of these
- features contained within the SHIFT-F1 setup menu. 4.2 users will have to
- exit the program and then reinvoke it with the following command:
-
- WP /S
-
- Explore the various submenus in the setup menu. Notice that you can set
- several bell options, such as bell on error, bell on hyphenation, bell on
- unsuccessful search, etc. Word Perfect also allows for two different backup
- options: one that will save your last file with a .BK! extension every time
- you "re-save" your work with the same file name, and a second, "timed" backup
- that will automatically backup your file as frequently in minutes as you'd
- like.
-
- Here's a Word Perfect feature you're sure to appreciate: the ability to
- display hard carriage returns as any ASCII character of your choice.
-
- Whenever you end a paragraph or enter a blank line in Word Perfect, the
- program inserts a character called a hard carriage return. This character is
- usually invisible, but you can use your setup menu to change the display of
- hard carriage returns to any ASCII character. After that, every time you
- press ENTER this character will appear on your screen to let you know you've
- ended a paragraph or inserted a blank line. Don't worry, though, the
- character will not show up in your printed document.
-
- 5.X users can assign an ASCII character to carriage returns by selecting the
- SHIFT-F1 setup menu and then making selections 3 and 6 (hard return display
- character). Then type the character you wish displayed. You can use the ALT
- key in combination with the numeric keypad to get extended ASCII characters.
- 4.2 users must use the WP /S startup parameter, and then make selection 3
- (set screen and beep option). Then enter down to the hard Return display as
- ASCII value option.
-
- Why not use ASCII 20. This way, assuming you have your screen punctuation's
- control feature set to "describe," you'll hear Vocal-Eyes say "paragraph" to
- mark every blank line or the end of every paragraph. Or, if you like, you
- can place the character into your character dictionary and set the control
- option to "Dictionary only." You could do it like this:
-
- /20
- carriage return
-
- Now, every time Word Perfect encountered a hard carriage return it would say
- "carriage return."
-
- Sounding Board users may want to setup the character dictionary as follows:
-
- /20
- CTRL-EB1
-
- Can you figure out what this entry does? Well, with this entry loaded into
- Vocal-Eyes' character dictionary buffer, it will send all three characters
- listed on the second line to your Sounding Board every time it encounters an
- ASCII 20 hard carriage return. The first character, the CTRL-E, alerts your
- synthesizer that the next two characters are to be taken as a Sounding Board
- command. And if you're familiar with your Sounding Board software, you've
- undoubtedly already recognize these characters as the command to ring the
- Sounding Board's bell.
-
- Would you like your Sounding Board to beep every time it encounters a hard
- carriage return in your text? Use the Word Perfect setup menu to reset your
- hard return to ASCII 20, then add the above two lines to your Word Perfect
- character dictionary.
-
- 15.10: SUMMARY
-
- We hope this section of the manual gave you ideas of how to put many of
- Vocal-Eyes' features together to get the job done. Although Word Perfect was
- discussed in detail, the same ideas can be carried to your favorite Word
- Processor or any application program for that matter. Feel free to
- experiment and add new features to your .SET file a little at a time. You
- will always think of better and short ways of getting the same thing done.
-
- Don't forget, we have included the files WP.SET and WP.KEY on your master
- diskettes. Basically, it is setup as was discussed in this section. You can
- tailor it to your needs as you see fit. It is only meant to get you started.
- Refer to Appendix J for a complete list and description of all .SET files
- included.
-