ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/MISC/HANDICAP/VEDOCS20.ZIP/SECT4.DOC

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SECTION FOUR
INTRODUCING THE VOCAL-EYES VOICE CONTROL PANEL

4.1:  INTRODUCTION

One of Vocal-Eyes' strongest features is the ability to customize your PC's
voice response in an almost infinite variety of combinations in order to
fulfill your individual needs and preferences.  In this section of your
Vocal-Eyes user's guide we're going to introduce you to the Vocal-Eyes Voice
Control Panel.  We'll show you how to access the control panel via the CTRL-\
key combination and take you on a brief tour of its main menus.  Finally you
will learn how to use a couple of them to set how your PC's screen and
keyboard speak.

4.2:  ACCESSING THE CONTROL PANEL

Accessing Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel is as easy as pressing CTRL-\.
First, press and hold down the CTRL key.  If your keyboard has two CTRL keys,
you can press either of them.  Now, while holding down the CTRL key, press
the "\" key.  Release them both together.

Did you hear the ascending tone, followed by 1 Screen?"  Congratulations--you
have just accessed the main pull-down menu of Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control
Panel.  This menu not only voices but also displays on the screen for sighted
users.

Press the DOWN ARROW key.  Did you hear Vocal-Eyes voice "2 Keyboard?"  Press
DOWN ARROW several times more.  You should hear:  "3 Hot Keys, 4 Cursoring,
5 General, 6 Files, 7 Help, 8 Exit."

Press DOWN ARROW one more time.  What happened?  That's right.  Vocal-Eyes
rotored back to the top of the main pull-down menu and voiced "1 Screen"
again.  Try pressing the UP ARROW key.  What happened?  Press UP ARROW
several times more.  This is used to move backwards through the menu options.

You can also use the LEFT and RIGHT arrows to move around in the menus.  The
LEFT arrow works just like the UP arrow and the RIGHT arrow works just like
the DOWN ARROW.

Once again for those of you who do not like to move your hands off of the
home row, you can use the BACKSPACE and SPACE BAR to move from entry to
entry.  The BACKSPACE will move to the previous entry and the SPACE BAR will
advance to the next entry.  A bit later in this section, you will learn how
to jump directly to any entry in the menu.  This allows you extremely fast
access to any of the many useful features.

Press the ESCAPE key.  Did you hear the descending tone.  Use one of your
ALT-0 through ALT-9 Read Window hot keys to read your PC's screen.  Where did
Vocal-Eyes' Control Panel go?

The Vocal-Eyes Voice Control Panel, like Vocal-Eyes itself, is tucked away in
a corner of your PC's memory.  It doesn't interfere with DOS or any
applications program you may be running.  Unless, of course, you want it to.
The Vocal-Eyes Voice Control Panel can be accessed at any time during your PC
work session.  DOS or your applications software will be placed into a
computerized version of suspended animation and remain so for the entire time
you're inside the control panel's easy-to-use pull-down menus.  Then, when
you use the ESCAPE key to exit the control panel, DOS, or your applications
program, is wakened and allowed to resume functioning.  Neither your program
nor its data has been affected in any way.  Your program doesn't even know it
was in suspended animation.

Does all of this sound familiar?  That is because it works very much like the
Review Mode.  There is one important difference however.  When Review Mode is
requested, it is activated immediately.  The menus however, are not popped up
until DOS is not busy.  The reason for this will become clear later on,
however, the main reason is because of a function in the menus which requires
the use of DOS.  If DOS is busy, the function could not be used.  Most of the
time, the menus will pop up instantly and this will never be a problem.  A
very good example of this can be show as follows.  If you have a directory
which contains several files, use the DIR command to list each entry.  While
it is displaying the entries, press the ALT key to enter review.  You will
notice review mode was entered immediately.  Go ahead and exit review.  Now
issue the DIR command again but this time, try and enter the menus.  You will
notice the menu did not pop up until the directory was completed.  The reason
again is because DOS was busy listing the entries to the screen.  The menus
waited patiently until DOS was finished and then popped up.

If you are in Review, as we said before, you can also enter the menus.  Even
if DOS is busy, the menus will pop up.  However, when you try and issue the
command which requires DOS, you may get the error 'Unable to access disk, DOS
is busy.'  There are some screen readers on the market today which do not
check if DOS is busy and issue the command anyway.  The results can be
disastrous!  Don't worry too much about all of this.  It is simply mentioned
here to let you know how Vocal-Eyes is watching out for you at all times.
Many times, you will not even realize the trouble it is going to...and of
course that is the way it should be.

4.3:  THE HELP OPTION

If you ever have any questions about any of the Voice Control Panel options,
you can either refer to Appendix D or better yet, why not select the '7 HELP'
option.  This menu option will bring up a submenu of three choices, Menus,
Review and VE Cursor.  The Review option will display the exact same help
information as did pressing F1 in Review mode.  Feel free to request Review
help in either location.

The VE Cursor has not been discussed as of yet.  Suffice it to say, the VE
cursor is simply another way of reviewing your screen similar to Review mode.
The main difference however is the VE cursor is interactive as where Review
will suspend your underlying application.  Much more will be discussed about
the VE cursor in section 10.

The third and final help option deals directly with each and every menu
option.  This can be a great way to get fast information about a particular
option.

Regardless of which help option you choose, the information is displayed in
the same format.  You can press Page Down to display the next screenful of
information or Page Up to display the previous page.  Pressing the space bar
will re-read the current page.  Pressing Escape will abort the help and
return you to the help submenu.

As with the Review help, if you have interruptability enabled, you can very
quickly get to the screen which contains the information you are concerned
with.  Please use this help information as needed.  It should answer all your
basic questions regarding all the menu options.  If you still require
assistance, you may refer to this users' guide.

Also Like the Review help, the information displayed is loaded from a disk
file called 'VE.HLP'.  Only if this file is in the original drive and
directory which Vocal-Eyes was loaded from will this feature work.  Since
there is such a large amount of information, we decided to read the help
information from disk when you request it instead of allocating a large
amount of your RAM.

If the file is not available or DOS is busy, Vocal-Eyes will speak "Help is
unavailable" and beep.  Make sure the VE.HLP file is loaded in the correct
location and try the help option again.  Remember, the menus will not pop-up
until DOS is available.  However, if you enter review first and than the
menus, they will pop-up immediately regardless of DOS.  Always use the fast
review hotkey to enter review mode instead of the standard review hotkey.
The standard hotkey should only be used within macros.  Using the fast review
hotkey will cause Vocal-Eyes to wait a fraction of a second for DOS to become
available.  Normally this is all that is required.

4.4:  THE "SCREEN" MENU

Use the CTRL-\ key to call up the Voice Control Panel.  Where are you in the
main pull-down menu?  Notice that it's the same place you were when you
exited the control panel.  If you're not at the "1 Screen" option, use your
ARROWs, space bar or Backspace keys to move there now.

Press ENTER.  What happened?  Did you hear Vocal-Eyes voice "1 Voice = On?"
Presto!  You've just entered the Screen submenu.  Press UP, DOWN, LEFT,
RIGHT, BACKSPACE or SPACE BAR several times to examine the many options in
the submenu.  We'll discuss the 16 menu choices in turn.

4.4.1:  SCREEN VOICE ON/OFF

Use your cursor keys to move you to option 1: "Voice On."  Press ENTER.  What
happened?  Did your hear Vocal-Eyes announce "1 Voice = Off?"  Press ENTER a
second time.

Turning the Voice option to "Off" does exactly what it says:  it turns your
PC's screen voice off.  Perhaps you're using a program that already sends
screen output to your synthesizer.  Or maybe you're more interested in
getting your data typed in fast than you are in listening to a program that
wants to talk your ears off.  In either of these instances you might want to
turn the screen voice off.  Of course if you do turn screen voice off you
will still hear the characters you type.  Also, all of your speech hot
keys--read character, word, line, sentence, paragraph, etc.--will still voice
normally.  And you can always use ALT-0 through ALT-9 to read your
screen--but only when you want to hear it.

If you have the screen voice set to off, all you need to do is access the
Screen submenu, locate option "1 voice off" and press ENTER.  The voice will
switch immediately back to the "on" position.  Pressing ENTER repeatedly at
this submenu prompt will toggle you back and forth between the "on" and "off"
settings.

The default value, which is to say the value this feature has been set to, is
"On."

4.4.2:  SPEECH RATE

Most speech synthesizers offer at least two different rates of speech.  Some
synthesizers, such as the Sounding Board, offer as many as ten.  Using Option
#2 on the Screen submenu you can set the rate at which your synthesizer
voices text written to your PC's screen.

Use your cursor keys to select option 2 on the Screen submenu.  Press ENTER
to change the rate at which screen text will be voiced.  You will be prompted
to enter a new speech rate from 0 to 9.  Rate 0 is the slowest rate, whereas
Rate 9 is the fastest.  Users of the Sounding Board and other synthesizers
which support 10 speech rates can select from among all 10 rates by typing in
a number from 0 through 9.  If your synthesizer only offers 2 different
speech rates, however, consider the numbers 0 through 4 to be the slow
setting and 5 through 9 the fast.  Three speed synthesizers can consider 0
through 3 as the slow setting, 4 through 6 the medium setting and 7 through
9 the fastest.  For a complete list of what your particular synthesizer
offers, refer to Appendix F: Speech Synthesizers.

At the "Rate (0-9): x" prompt, simply press the desired rate number followed
by ENTER.  If you type the number incorrectly and have not pressed ENTER, you
can press the BACKSPACE key, retype the number and then press ENTER to accept
the correct value.  You can at anytime abort the entire process by a press of
the ESCAPE key.  If you press ENTER before typing a number, the previous
setting is used.

When you make a change to the screen voice rate you'll hear the change
immediately as Vocal-Eyes reads the new rate setting and then the current
menu selection, "2 Rate = x" where x is the current rate setting.  If you're
not happy with the change, simply press ENTER and type the new setting.
Experiment with the screen rate setting until you find the speech rate that
is most comfortable for you.  Soon we'll show you how you can save your new
setting so that it will be there every time you run Vocal-Eyes.

4.4.3:  SCREEN PITCH AND VOLUME

Cursor through options 3, 4 and 5 of the Screen submenu.  Notice how they
offer you the ability to alter the pitch, tone and/or the volume of text
which appears on your PC's screen.  We'll discuss pitch and volume first.

The Sounding Board, and certain other speech synthesizers, support 10
different levels of both pitch and volume.  Would you like to change either
the pitch or the volume of your screen text?  If so, cursor down to the
appropriate menu choice and press ENTER.  As was the case with the screen
rate option, you will be prompted to enter a number from 0 to 9.  The number
0 represents the lowest pitch, or the quietest volume, your synthesizer is
capable of producing.  The number 9 represents the highest pitch, or loudest
volume.  Again, your synthesizer may not support all 10 levels of volume or
pitch.  Refer to Appendix F to find out, or experiment by entering different
values for either or both of these settings.

4.4.4:  SCREEN TONE

Along with 10 different levels of pitch, tone and rate, the Sounding Board is
capable of voicing text in 26 different levels of tonality, ranging from a
needle-thin "robot-like" voice to a deep-throated growl.  These different
levels are represented by the letters A to Z, with A being the deep-throated
growl and Z the thin nasal sound.

DECtalk users will notice the Tone setting can be used to switch between the
seven possible voices.  Again refer to Appendix F for a complete list of what
your synthesizer is capable of supporting.

Cursor down to the Tone menu option and press ENTER.  Notice that here you
are prompted to enter a letter from A to Z.  The default value for this
setting is a moderate "I"  If this setting is not to your liking, try
supplying a different letter value and then press ENTER.

As was the case with the other screen voice settings we've discussed thus
far, your synthesizer may not offer the full 26 tone settings.  Many offer no
tone control at all.

4.4.5:  THE PUNCTUATION SUBMENU

Cursor down to option 6.  Press Enter.  You have now entered the Punctuation
Submenu.  The first thing you will hear is: "1 Textual = Off."  Cursor down,
if you like, and examine the other options in this submenu.  Each option will
be discussed in turn.

1 Textual On/Off/Dictionary Only

This option controls the voicing of the standard, textual punctuation set,
including the comma, the period, question mark, exclamation point, semicolon
and colon.  By default all of these punctuation marks will not be voiced.
Set this option to on by pressing ENTER twice if you want these punctuation
marks to be voiced.

Pressing ENTER the first time calls up the "Dictionary Only" option.  You can
use this setting to have any group of general punctuation spoken without
voicing the entire set.  You could, for example, instruct Vocal-Eyes to voice
the period and the comma, but not the colon, semicolon or any of the others.
You could also, if you desired, alter the pronunciation of the punctuation
marks.  You could, say, use the "Dictionary Only" setting to instruct
Vocal-Eyes to voice "Full Stop" whenever it encounters a period, or "Wow" in
place of each and every exclamation point.

We'll be talking a lot about creating and installing dictionaries in a later
section of this manual.

2 Math On/Off/Dictionary Only

This rotor selection is similar to the one described above, only instead of
general punctuation this switch controls the mathematical operators:  the +,
-, *, /, (, ), %, ^, <, > and =.  Leave this setting in the default "on"
position to hear all of these marks spoken when read from your PC's screen.
Set it to "Off" to silence voicing of these marks.  Again, dictionaries will
be discussed in a later section of the manual.

3 Miscellaneous On/Off/Dictionary Only

This setting controls the rest of your PC's standard punctuation:  the @, #,
$, &, ', ", ~, \, |, _, `, {, }, [ and ],  Once again, leave this setting in
the default "On" position to hear these marks voiced and "Off" to silence
their voicing whenever text is being read from the screen.

4 Spacing On/Off/Dictionary Only

This setting controls whether or not spaces which appear on your PC's screen
will be voiced.  Probably you will want to leave this setting in the default
"Off" setting to avoid a lot of unnecessary chatter, but give the "On"
setting a try if you like.

5 Control Off/Dictionary Only/ASCII/Describe/Say "Control"

This setting controls how Vocal-Eyes voices the ASCII control characters from
ASCII 1 to ASCII 26.  Notice that besides the default setting of "Off" and
the "Dictionary Only" setting which we shall discuss later, there are three
other settings for you to choose from:  "ASCII," "Describe," and "Say
Control."

Each of these settings does exactly what it says.  The "ASCII" setting
reports the numeric ASCII value of any and all ASCII characters that appear
on your PC's screen.  "ASCII 12," for example, or "ASCII 21."  With the
"Describe" setting enabled, Vocal-Eyes will describe these ASCII characters
as they appear on your screen.  ASCII 12, for example, would be described as
"Female symbol," and ASCII 21 as "Marker."

Setting this value to "Say Control" would cause Vocal-Eyes to announce the
ASCII character as a control character.  ASCII 12, in this case would be
announced Control-L, and ASCII 21 as Control-U.

6 Enhanced Off/Dictionary Only/ASCII/Describe

This setting controls how Vocal-Eyes voices the extended ASCII graphic
character set from ASCII 127 to ASCII 255 as well as ASCII 0 and ASCII 27 to
ASCII 31.  If you leave this setting in the default "Off" position, none of
these characters will be voiced.  Setting it to "ASCII" will instruct
Vocal-Eyes to announce the ASCII value for each and every extended ASCII
graphic character it encounters.

A far more useful option, especially when you first begin working with a new
program and want to see how things are laid out on the screen, is the
"Describe" setting.  Rotoring the Enhanced Punctuation switch to this setting
will cause Vocal-Eyes to describe each extended graphic character it
encounters.  Thus, when Vocal-Eyes encounters the upper right-hand corner of
a box, instead of keeping silent about it--the "Off" setting--or voicing
"ASCII 218"--the "ASCII setting--it will go ahead and tell you, "Upper right
corner."

Mix and match these and all the other screen settings as desired.  Press
ESCAPE until you hear the descending tone that lets you know you've returned
to DOS or to your applications software program.  Or, alternatively, you can
always use the ALT-X "Quick Escape" key combination for a fast exit from this
or any Voice Control Panel submenu.

4.4.6:  A SPECIAL NOTE TO SOUNDING BOARD USERS

Sounding Board users will notice how much more powerful the Vocal-Eyes
punctuation features are than the ones that come standard with the Sounding
Board software.  Consequently, Vocal-Eyes will automatically disable the
Sounding Board punctuation hot key.  Consequently, your Sounding Board
punctuation rotor controls will not work with Vocal-Eyes.  Your rate, pitch
and volume controls will work just fine, however, you can use either the
Voice Control Panel or your Sounding Board hot keys to modify any of these
settings.

You may wish to unassign the Sounding Board's punctuation hot key in order to
avoid unnecessary keyboard clutter.

While on the subject of the Sounding Board hot keys, lets talk about how they
effect Vocal-Eyes.  The Time/Date hot key will voice the time and date using
the screen voice of Vocal-Eyes.  The Voice On/Off hot key will still shut the
synthesizer speech on or off.  Vocal-Eyes does not even realize you may have
shut the voice off.  The Rate Up and Rate Down hot keys will toggle the
screen voice rate up and down on the fly.  For example, you can be listening
to some text and press the Sounding Board Rate Up or Rate Down hot keys
causing the speech to be affected immediately.  If you pop up Vocal-Eyes menu
and look at the current screen voice rate, you will notice it has been
effected accordingly.  The exact same is true for the Sounding Board Volume
Up and Volume Down hot keys.  They too will effect the Screen voice volume.
As we already said, the Sounding Board Punctuation hot key will be disabled
by Vocal-Eyes.  The Hyperscan hot key works as expected.  Vocal-Eyes does not
care if hyperscan is on or off.  The same is true for Rewind and Fastforward.
Feel free to use these keys as needed.  The Pause hot key and the
Enable/Disable hot keys also will work just fine.

4.4.7:  NUMBERS ON/OFF

Going down the Screen submenu, option 7 reads "7 Numbers = On."  By default,
Vocal-Eyes reads any number on your PC's screen as you might speak them in
conversation.  The number 123, for example, would be voiced "one hundred
twenty three."  Pressing Enter at the "7 Numbers" prompt will toggle
Vocal-Eyes' number read feature to off.  With Numbers set to "off" Vocal-Eyes
will read numbers one digit at a time.  In our previous example, instead of
speaking one hundred twenty three, Vocal-Eyes will speak "one two three."  If
the numbers option is on, it will also read $2.98 as two dollars and
ninety-eight cents, and 3:30 as three-thirty as well as 1990 as nineteen
ninety.

The "Numbers" option is what's known as a toggle switch.  Pressing ENTER once
changes the setting from "on" to "off."  Pressing ENTER a second time changes
it from "off" to "on."  Additional presses of the ENTER key will "toggle"
this setting back and forth between off and on.

4.4.8:  THE REPEAT FILTER

Cursor down to the 8th option in the Screen submenu.  This option allows you
to set Vocal-Eyes' repeat filter.  Often, many programs will repeat long
strings of characters in order to decorate the screen, break text into pages,
etc.  It can be quite annoying, for instance, having to listen to Vocal-Eyes
read out an entire 80-column screen line worth of dashes, or 15 or 20 equal
signs in a row which have been placed above a list of menu selections.   This
is where Vocal-Eyes' repeat filter comes in handy.

There are  three settings to the repeat filter:  "Off," "Say Repeats," and
"Ignore."

With the filter in the "Say Repeats" position, Vocal-Eyes will "look ahead"
at text it is about to voice.  Whenever it sees an occurrence of several like
characters in a row, instead of reading them all it will voice the character
a few times only and then announce the number of times the character is
repeated.  A line of dashes extending all the way across your PC's screen,
for instance, may be voiced as follows:

dash dash dash repeats 80 times

The next option, "Ignore," would have instructed Vocal-Eyes not to voice the
string of dashes at all.

Leaving the repeat filter in the "Off" position would instruct Vocal-Eyes to
leave all repeating characters alone--in which case the above string of 80
dashes would have been voiced dash by dash from beginning to end.

By default, this setting has been left in the "Off" position.  Would you like
to change it now?  Use your UP or DOWN ARROW key to move you to the Repeat
Filter prompt.  Notice that Vocal-Eyes voices the current setting.  Now,
press ENTER.  Did you hear Vocal-Eyes advance your repeat filter selection
one setting?  Press ENTER again if you'd prefer Vocal-Eyes to ignore all
repeating characters entirely and yet again to return yourself to the default
"Off" setting.

The repeat filter is a rotary setting.  What this means is that every time
you press ENTER at the repeat filter prompt Vocal-Eyes will advance, or
rotor, you one notch through the various settings until you've seen them all.
Then it will circle, or rotor, back around to the first selection and begin
again.

4.4.9:  THE REPEAT VALUE

In the previous topic we mentioned that whenever the repeat filter is in one
of the enabled modes, Vocal-Eyes will look ahead in your text and perform the
appropriate filtering action after a character has repeated itself a certain
number of times.  Using the Repeat Value setting you can adjust the number of
times a character must repeat before Vocal-Eyes jumps in and says "repeats"
or decides to ignore the string completely.  By default Vocal-Eyes will allow
a character to repeat three times before filtering remaining similar
characters.  However you can reset this value to any number from 1 to 9.

Whatever you set this option to, also tells Vocal-Eyes how many times to
actually speak the repeated character before saying "Repeats x Times."  If
you have eighty dashes and the Repeat Value is set at 7, you will hear:

dash dash dash dash dash dash dash repeats 80 times

Use your UP or DOWN ARROW key to move you to the "Repeat Value" selection.
Press ENTER.  You will be prompted for the number of time from 1 to 9 that
you would like the character to repeat before Vocal-Eyes' repeat filter steps
in.   Naturally, if you have set the repeat filter to "Off" this setting will
have no effect whatsoever.

4.4.10:  BLANK LINES

Would you like Vocal-Eyes to say "Blank" every time it encounters a blank
line when voicing your PC's screen display?  Perhaps you've got a document on
screen and you need to make sure you've skipped a line between each
paragraph.  Or maybe you are just checking out the screen layout of a new or
unfamiliar program.

In any case, to instruct Vocal-Eyes to say "Blank" whenever it encounters a
blank line on your screen display, simply enter the Screen submenu and cursor
down to option #10.  Press ENTER to toggle this feature to the "Say Blank"
option.  Press ENTER a second time to toggle it back off again.

4.4.11:  Signal Cursor Position

Turning this option on will cause Vocal-Eyes to say 'CURSOR' whenever it is
reading something which contains the cursor position.  The default is off.
For example, if you asked Vocal-Eyes to read this line:

Mary had a little lamb.

and the cursor was on the first 'l' of little, Vocal-Eyes would say:

Mary had a cursor little lamb.

Notice the word 'cursor' thrown in before the word little.  This tells you
the cursor is sitting on the 'l' of 'little.'  With this feature enabled, you
can tell exactly where your cursor currently resides.  If your cursor is
sitting in the middle of a word, Vocal-Eyes will break the word at the cursor
position and speak the first part followed by the word 'cursor' and finally
the second part of the word.  For example, if the cursor is sitting on the
'p' of 'computer', Vocal-Eyes would say 'com cursor puter'.  Although you may
not want this feature enabled all the time, feel free to turn it on and off
as needed.

Pressing ENTER on this option will toggle between on and off.

4.4.12 Attribute changes

With this option enabled, Vocal-Eyes will speak color changes as it reads the
text displayed on the screen.  A hotkey can also be assigned to perform the
exact same function.  More will be discussed about this option in a later
section.  Pressing ENTER will toggle between on and off.  The default is off.

4.4.13 Auto box read

This is a very powerful feature.  Many programs like to display information
on the screen in boxes.  Visually this is very appealing and easy to follow.
However, because the information is printed over the top of existing data, it
can be difficult to only read the box's contents.

As you will see in a later section, you could press the read box hotkey
located in the hotkey menu.  This is good if you know a box is currently on
the screen and even if you do, it still requires you to press an additional
keystroke.

If you enable this feature, Vocal-Eyes will automatically watch the full
screen for any boxes which popup on the screen.  If more than one box is
currently on the screen, Vocal-Eyes will attempt to search out the box of
most interest.  Once a box has been detected, Vocal-Eyes will automatically
read the contents of the box.  Error messages, dialog boxes, status messages,
anything which pops up in a box can be set to automatically be read by
enabling this feature.

Once a box appears on the screen, Vocal-Eyes will read the box only once.
Even if the information within the box changes.  However, if another box pops
up on top of the original, Vocal-Eyes will read the new one.  Once the new
box disappears, the original box will be reread assuming it is still
displayed on the screen.

More on this feature and the read box hotkey will be discussed in a later
section.

Feel free to give the auto box read a try.  We are sure you will find it very
handy especially for new and unfamiliar programs.

4.4.14 Screen activity tone

The screen activity tone will let you know if your screen is changing when
the voice has been silenced.

Lets say you are downloading a file through a modem and your communications
program is constantly updating the screen as the data is being received.
Allowing this data to be spoken could cause your download to take more time
or even abort the download.  Therefore, you should silence the speech.  But
with the speech silenced, you don't know how the status of your download is
going.  Actually, there is a way.  If you enable the screen activity tone,
Vocal-Eyes will emit a small tone about once a second if the voice has been
silenced.  If the voice has not been silenced, the tone will not be sounded.
This way if you hear the tone, you know your screen is changing thereby
giving you confidence your download is working correctly without hearing each
little detail through the speech synthesizer.

This is a handy way of giving you confidence your machine has not locked up
but is truly doing something to the screen.  Feel free to enable and disable
this feature as desired.

4.4.15 Port intercept

This option allows you to tell Vocal-Eyes to intercept information which
would have gone out any of the four COM ports or any of the three LPT ports.
The available options are off, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, LPT1, LPT2 and LPT3.
If you have this enabled for any of the seven ports and data is sent to the
port by any applications program, Vocal-Eyes will steal the data and send it
to your voice synthesizer using the voice settings for the screen voice.  The
data will not be allowed to pass to the actual serial or parallel port.

You may be using an applications program which does not speak very well on
its own but offers the ability to echo information to a serial port or
parallel port.  Normally the applications program believes there is a printer
attached to the selected port.  However, by instructing the applications
program to send its data through a specified port and having Vocal-Eyes
intercept the data through the same port, you now have the data speaking to
you as desired.

If you setup Vocal-Eyes to intercept LPT1 and you issue a print screen
command, Vocal-Eyes will speak the entire screen.  Even if you have your
printer attached to LPT1.

Pressing ENTER on this option will toggle between all seven ports as well as
a setting of off.

This option will not work for those programs which send the data directly to
the serial or parallel hardware.  Only those programs which send the data to
the ports through BIOS can be intercepted and spoken by Vocal-Eyes.  Normally
this is not a problem however, you should be aware of such a problem.

4.4.16 BIOS TTY Intercept

This option allows you to tell Vocal-Eyes if it should intercept the standard
BIOS TTY screen write function.  You may have noticed that Vocal-Eyes does
not require ANSI.SYS loaded on any computer system for the DOS prompt to be
voiced.  This is not true with all screen readers on the market today.  The
reason for this is because Vocal-Eyes intercepts this port for voicing by
default.

You may be asking if this is so good, why would you ever want to disable it?
The reason is because of certain applications programs which write
information to the screen twice.  Visually, this is never detected however,
with Vocal-Eyes, this problem can be very destructive to the voice.
Therefore, if you are using an applications program which sounds like every
letter is being doubled in a word, try setting this option to ignore instead
of intercept.

If you set this option to ignore on certain systems, your DOS prompt may no
longer speak unless you load the ANSI.SYS device driver.  Given a choice, it
is usually faster and requires less memory to enable this feature and not
load ANSI.SYS.  Even if you have this feature enabled, you can still load
ANSI.SYS but unless it is required by your applications program, save memory
and don't load it.

Don't worry if you don't fully understand the technical reasons for this
feature.  Just remember if you run an applications program and you can not
understand what is being spoken (it sounds like a strange language), you may
want to set this option to ignore.  It may make your program speak properly.
There are very few programs which require this to be setup to ignore.
However, if required, Vocal-Eyes supports it.

To return to the main menu while in the Screen submenu, press the ESCAPE key.
The ESCAPE key will always return you to the previous menu or if you are
already at the main menu, a press of the ESCAPE key will exit you completely
out of the menus.

4.5:  THE "KEYBOARD" MENU

Here's something we think you'll find quite handy when using Vocal-Eyes:  the
ability to set voice output differently for your screen and keyboard.  Let's
say, for instance, that you would like to quiet the keys as you type them but
hear the information presented on the screen voiced at normal volume.  Or
you'd like to hear the spaces as you type them, but not as they appear on the
screen.  No problem for Vocal-Eyes!  Just use the CTRL-\ key to summon forth
the Voice Control Panel and then cursor down to the "2 KEYBOARD" option.

4.5.1:  KEYBOARD VOICE ON/OFF

When you enter the Keyboard submenu the first setting you will encounter is
Voice On/Off option.  This is exactly the same as the Voice On/Off setting
you encountered back in the Screen submenu, only instead of silencing the
screen voice this setting will silence your keyboard.  Sometimes you just
don't want to here each letter, number or mark of punctuation as you type
them.  Press ENTER at the "Voice" prompt to reset the keyboard voice to
"off."  Nothing you type from this point on will be sent to your synthesizer.
Your screen, however, will speak normally, as will your interactive hot keys,
such as the CTRL-L line review and your ten ALT-0 through ALT-9 screen
windows.

Are you ready to turn your keyboard voice back on?  It's as simple as
entering Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel and pressing ENTER at the Voice
On/Off prompt in the keyboard submenu.

4.5.2:  SPEECH RATE, PITCH, TONE, VOLUME AND PUNCTUATION

Options 2 through 6 of the Keyboard submenu will undoubtedly look familiar to
you.  They are the same options that you worked with earlier in the Screen
submenu.  As you will recall, we mentioned then that Vocal-Eyes offers the
ability to set the screen and keyboard voices to different rates of speech,
pitch and volume, as well as to different levels of punctuation voicing.

Notice that many of the punctuation settings have been preset to different
values than they were in the screen punctuation submenu.  You probably won't
want to hear every mark of punctuation that appears on your screen.  You
probably will want to hear them as you type them, however.  With Vocal-Eyes'
two separate screen and keyboard voices, you can hear exactly what you want
to hear when you want to hear it.  Feel free to set these options to your
liking.

4.5.3:  SPECIAL KEYS VOICING

There are many "special" keys that you may or may not want to hear announced.
With Vocal-Eyes you can pick and choose as you like.

Cursor down to option 7 "Special Keys" in the Keyboard submenu.  Press ENTER.
You will now be presented with a second, nested submenu describing the
various sets of special keys whose voicing you can turn on or off.  Below is
a list with descriptions.

1:  Function Keys - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not to voice
the function keys F1 to F10 or from F1 to F12, depending on the layout of
your keyboard.  If on and you press the F5 key, Vocal-Eyes will speak "F5."
The default is off.

2:  Toggle Keys - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not to voice
the various toggle keys, including the CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK, INSERT and SCROLL
LOCK keys.  The default is on.  Although INSERT is included in this group,
Vocal-Eyes will not speak the current state of the insert key.  Each program
handles the status of the insert key differently.  It is impossible for
Vocal-Eyes to know if you are in insert or over type with 100% certainty.
Therefore, Vocal-Eyes will simply say 'INSERT' when the insert key is pressed
assuming this option has been enabled.

3:  Cursor Movement - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not to
voice the cursor movement keys, including the UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT ARROW
keys as well as HOME, PAGE UP, PAGE DOWN, DELETE and END keys.  The default
is off.

4:  Key Enhancements - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not to
voice the key enhancements, such as the SHIFT, ALT and CTRL keys.  The
default is off.

5:  Escape and 6: Enter - These switches instruct Vocal-Eyes whether or not
to voice the ESCAPE and ENTER keys respectively.  Both default to off.

(A NOTE ON THE CAPS LOCK KEY:  Whenever you have the CAPS LOCK key enabled,
you can disable it briefly in order to type a few lower case letters by
pressing either of the SHIFT keys.  Vocal-Eyes will alert you whenever you
press a SHIFT key with the CAPS LOCK key engaged by sounding a brief tone for
each character typed.  This should prevent you from accidentally forgetting
to disable the CAPS LOCK key and typing words with lower case beginnings and
upper case endings.  We are sure this will save you at some point.  Feel free
to try this to listen at what the tone sounds like.  You must exit the menus,
make sure the CAPS LOCK key is enabled and press a letter while holding the
shift key down.)

4.5.4:  VOICING OF CAPITAL LETTERS

Option 8 from the keyboard submenu allows you to select what to do when an
upper case letter is typed from the keyboard.

Vocal-Eyes offers three different ways of alerting you that a capital letter
has been typed:  Pitch, tone and "Say cap."

The default "Pitch" option causes Vocal-Eyes to voice capital letters in a
slightly higher pitch than normal text.  Select "Tone" and you will hear a
brief tone every time a capital letter is entered from your PC's keyboard.
Selecting "Say Cap" will cause Vocal-Eyes to actually voice the word "Cap"
before any capital letter you type.  Of course you can always choose not to
be alerted about capital letters.  To do this, simply select the "Undefined"
option from the Capitals rotary menu.

4.5.5:  KEY CLICK OFF/ON

Let's say you've turned the keyboard voice off.  You don't want to hear each
letter, number or punctuation mark  as you type them.  Still, you'd like some
confirmation as you type along that the keys are being pressed hard enough.
Here's where the Key Click option comes in handy.  Move down to this option
in the keyboard submenu and toggle it to the "On" position.  Now, use the
ESCAPE key, or ALT-X to return you to your work.  Notice that as you press
each key a faint click is generated.  Pretty handy, don't you think?

4.5.6:  INTERRUPTABILITY

Now we come to one of the most useful of Vocal-Eyes' many keyboard voice
features:  Interruptability.  This is controlled by option 10 in the keyboard
submenu.

We first discussed interruptability back in SECTION 3 of this manual when we
got Vocal-Eyes up and running.  You will recall from our discussion that this
feature allows you to stop the voicing of any character, line, sentence,
paragraph or screen by simply pressing any key on your PC's keyboard.  We
showed  you how interruptability helped Vocal-Eyes to keep up with fast
typists, and how it helped you silence unwanted speech.  unfortunately,
however, not all speech synthesizers can handle the heavy work load required
by this feature.  Naturally, the Sounding Board has no trouble whatsoever
with interruptability, since the feature was designed partly with this
particular speech synthesizer in mind.  But your synthesizer may not handle
interruptability as well as does the Sounding Board.  It may start to squawk
uncontrollably, or it may lock up entirely.  If this happens, you may wish to
use the Interruptability option on the Keyboard menu to turn Interruptability
off.

With Interruptability turned off, Vocal-Eyes will voice each and every
character you type in turn, and it will read any line, sentence, paragraph or
screen in its entirety before moving on to the next unit of text to be
voiced.  Vocal-Eyes will voice each textual unit in turn.  Pressing a key
will simply add more text into the cue of text to be voiced.

But what if, say, you've pressed one of your ALT-0 through ALT-9 read screen
hot keys.  You've got the information you want, but there's still a lot of
your screen waiting to be voiced.  Is there any way you can "interrupt" the
voicing like you can by pressing any key with Interruptability turned on?
Yes, as a matter of fact there is.  It's done via the CTRL-X Momentary
Silence hot key.

Try this.  Cursor down to the Interruptability option and press ENTER four
times to turn this feature off.  Now, press ESCAPE enough times to return you
to DOS or your applications program.  Or type ALT-ESCAPE or ALT-X once to
"express" exit the Voice Control Panel.  Use one of your ALT-0 through ALT-9
read screen hot keys to start the voicing of text.  Press the CTRL-X
Momentary Silence hot key.  Did your text stop voicing?  How fast did it
stop?  Different synthesizers will respond differently to the CTRL-X
Momentary Silence hot key.  Some, such as the Sounding Board, will respond
immediately.  Others may take a character or two, or produce a "hiccupping"
sound when CTRL-X is pressed.

There are other times when Interruptability might actually get in your way.
Say your working in your word processor, reading your text line by line with
the DOWN ARROW key.  You wouldn't want Vocal-Eyes to silence the reading of
each line if all you've done is press the DOWN ARROW key to read the next
line.  Which is why you have been supplied with five options at the
Interruptability prompt:  Off, All Keys, Cursor Keys Off, Cursor Keys only,
and Control or ALT.

With a setting of Off, as we stated above, Vocal-Eyes' interruptability
feature is completely disabled.  No keys will interrupt, though of course you
can use the CTRL-X momentary silence key at any time to silence voice output.

The "All Keys" option turns Interruptability on for all keys.  This is of
course the default setting.  If you wish to silence the voice without issuing
a keystroke to your application, press either the SHIFT or CONTROL keys.
Since these keys do nothing by themselves, they make an excellent choice for
silencing the speech.  Once you use a system which does not offer this easy
silence, you will really appreciate what Vocal-Eyes takes for granted.

The "Cursor Keys Off," selection, on the contrary, turns Interruptability on
for all keys except the four arrow keys.  These keys will not silence the
speech when they are pressed.  Thus you can cursor ahead in your text without
the fear of missing anything important.

The "Cursor Keys Only" works the exact opposite from the cursor keys off
option.  Cursor keys only means exactly that, only the four arrow keys will
silence the voice.  As before, you can also use the silence hotkey if one has
been assigned.

The "Control or ALT" option gives you the ease of pressing a single key which
normally does nothing to the underlying applications program to silence the
speech.  Selecting this option will allow you to press either control or ALT
key to silence the speech.  If your keyboard has more than one control or
ALT, either can be pressed to silence the voice.  The SHIFT key has purposely
been excluded from this option.  This is because as you type, the SHIFT key
is likely to be pressed as part of your normal text.  However, the Control
and ALT keys are normally only used for commands.

Note:  The silence hot key which defaults to CTRL-X can only be used if
interruptability is set to off or Cursor Keys Only.  If you have it set to
any of the other options, the silence hot key will be completely undefined.
This means if you press CTRL-X, it will go through to the application.  If
you think about this, it makes sense.  Why press CTRL-X to silence the speech
with interruptability when all you need to press is the CONTROL key by
itself.

Ok, lets say you are listening to a large file being displayed on the screen.
You know what you really want to hear is not for a couple pages yet.  Why not
silence the speech?  You might be saying how do I turn it back on?  Well, the
speech can be toggled on and off.  For example, lets say you silenced the
speech by pressing the CONTROL key assuming interruptability is on.  Simply
press the CONTROL key again and the voice will start up at the new location.
Skipping all text between when you silenced the voice and turned it back on.
The same is true if you have interruptability turned off and you silenced the
speech with the silence hot key CTRL-X.  Simply press CTRL-X again and as
before, the speech will start up again.  You can toggle the speech on and off
as many times as you like.  This can be a very handy way of skipping through
large passages of text.

Lets go through one more scenario.  Say you have issued the DOS DIR
(directory) command.  You heard the entry you were looking for so you
silenced the speech.  But now, how do you know when the directory has been
completed.  You could toggle the speech on and off every so often but this
would not be acceptable.  You guessed it, Vocal-Eyes has taken care of this
problem for you.  If you silence the speech, as soon as DOS or your
application program is ready for more keyboard input, Vocal-Eyes will issue
a blip tone indicating to you that the text is finished being displayed so
you can type your next command.  Give it a try.  Issue the DOS DIR command
and as soon as it starts to speak, silence the voice.  Now listen for the
blip tone.  As soon as you hear it, you can assume DOS is finished displaying
the directory to the screen and it is ready for your next command.  Isn't if
funny how such an insignificant blip tone can help you be that much more
productive?

4.5.7:  WORD MODE OFF/ON

Perhaps you'd prefer to hear what you're typing word by word.  Easy enough.
Simply enter the Keyboard submenu and cursor down to the Word Mode option.
Press ENTER to toggle on the feature.  Press ESCAPE several times or ALT-X
once to return to DOS or your applications program.  Notice that now when you
type you don't hear anything until you reach a space, a mark of punctuation,
or until you press ENTER or any of the various cursor keys.  Then you hear
the word you've just type.  Try word processing with this feature enabled.
It's so smooth, it's almost like gliding through air.

When you enable Word Mode, you may also want to disable the space from
speaking in the keyboard punctuation menu.

Naturally, Interruptability has no affect on text voiced in word Mode.  That
is to say those keys on the standard keyboard will not silence the speech.
However, all the other keys will act as they always did.  For example, the
shift key will not silence the speech since it is used in your normal typing
but the control key will silence the speech.  So will the function keys and
all cursoring keys.  You sort of have the best of both worlds.  You can type
as fast as you like.  Vocal-Eyes will say each word without interruption.

4.6:  MOVING AROUND IN THE MENUS

As you already know, you can use the four arrow keys to move up and down the
menus.  Those of you who would rather leave your hands on the home row, can
use the SPACE BAR to switch to the next higher selection or the BACKSPACE to
switch to the previous selection.  This is great, especially at first when
you are learning all the options.  However, as time goes on and you start
remembering exactly where certain options are located, you can jump directly
to an entry.  For example from the main menu, regardless of which option is
currently under the cursor, you can jump to the screen menu by typing the
corresponding number followed by ENTER.  This is why each entry has a number
preceding its name.  You can do this any time during your visit to the Voice
Control Panel.  Just type in the number of the menu option you want and then
press ENTER.  You will be moved directly to that option.  Be careful,
however, with menu options that are toggle or rotary switches.  Using the
number/ENTER access method to move to one of these prompts will cause the
setting to be toggled or rotored forward the same as if you'd cursored down
and pressed ENTER to change it.

For example, let's say we are at the main menu and we want to toggle the Key
Click option from Off to On.  First you would need to get into the Voice
Control Panel by pressing CTRL-\.  Then you need to get into the Keyboard
submenu by pressing 2ENTER.  Since option 9 is the Key Click option, you need
to enter 9ENTER.  At this point, the option will toggle to the next state (On
in our example.)

There is another very nice feature which was talked about very little.  This
is the express exit command.  If you are in the menus and want to get out,
you could of course press ESCAPE the required number of times.  However, why
not simply press ALT-X.  You could for example be in the punctuation submenu
which is off of the Screen submenu which is off of the main menu.  To exit
the menus completely, it would require you to press ESCAPE three times.  Why
not press ALT-X and exit with one key stroke?  Those of you who have the
enhanced 101 Keyboard and your system supports its abilities, you can also
press ALT-ESCAPE.  This works exactly as ALT-X.  Use whichever keystroke you
feel most comfortable with.

4.7:  RESETTING MENU OPTIONS TO A KNOWN STATE

There is one more key which is handled specially while in the Voice Control
Panel.  This is the DELETE key.  If you press the DELETE key while on a
toggle or rotary option, it will reset it to a known state.  For example,
pressing DELETE while at the Interruptability option which is off of the
Keyboard submenu, will always set this option to All keys.  Refer to Appendix
D if you wish a complete list of default values when DELETE is pressed.  Or
of course, you can simply give the DELETE a try to see what the value will be
reset to.  You can always use ENTER to toggle back to the original setting.

If you press DELETE on an option which is not a toggle or rotary, it will act
just as if you had pressed the ENTER key.  The ability to set a toggle option
to a known state is very important if you plan on using macros with
Vocal-Eyes.

4.8:  SUMMARY

In this section of your Vocal-Eyes users' guide we introduced you to the
Vocal-Eyes Voice Control Panel.  We showed you how to access the control
panel via the CTRL-\ key combination.  We took you on a brief tour of its
main menus, and then we showed you how to use two of the submenus to set how
your PC's screen and keyboard speak.

Go ahead and explore and experiment with these options.   Try working with
your new settings for a while to see how you like them.  Feel free to return
to the Voice Control Panel at any time to modify any or all of the settings.

Have you set your PC's screen and keyboard voice the way you like them?  If
so, read on to the next section where we'll show you how you can save your
settings to disk so they'll be available to you any and every time you begin
a new work session with your Vocal-Eyes-equipped PC.