Posts Tagged with 'control-mouse-with-your-voice'

The Ultimate MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 Global Commands List

[msd] is a great program but learning so many commands at once can be intimidating. I've put together another document to help you learn and remember all the global commands found in Dictate version 1.5.*.

MacSpeech Dictate has two types of commands - global commands and application specific commands. The global commands work in all programs and the application-specific commands work only in a single application, for example Mail, Safari, or iChat. This document is only concerned with the global commands, which you'll need to know best and are likely to do most often.

These documents aren't in any way meant to replace the Dictate User's Manual - every Dictate user should absolutely read the manual, even if you're not "the manual reading type". Trust me, you'll get far better use of Dictate if you have read the manual! But nobody's memory is perfect, especially for a program with so many commands, so I've made this commands list to help you out.

The first "Global Commands List" I created, for MacSpeech Dictate 1.2.1, was three pages long - this new one contains fourteen full pages of commands! Dictate has really matured and grown in just a few versions. I've been through all of MacSpeech's available documentation and looked at the AppleScript commands within the program to pull this together. There's no hidden "behind the scenes" knowledge included here, but it took many hours and a lot of organisation to get all of these commands together and in one place in a useful format.

Instead of downloading this one directly, I'm asking you to sign up to download it. As soon as you've confirmed your subscription you'll be taken to a page containing the zipped PDF file ready to download:

Why sign up? I'll occasionally be sending you information about MacSpeech Dictate and the new MacSpeech Scribe, letting you know there's a new blog post on the topic, and telling you about important upgrades. If you aren't interested in the information you can always unsubscribe right away.

Once you've downloaded the list, I suggest you print it out and read through it, highlighting commands that you often forget or ones that you didn't know about but think you might find useful. This way you can find them quickly when you need them.

If you have any trouble signing up to receive the Ultimate MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 Global Commands List, please contact me and I'll happily help you out.

- Ricky Buchanan

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Safari Commands Cheat Sheet for MacSpeech Dictate 1.3

MacSpeech Dictate is a great program but learning so many commands at once can be intimidating. Here's a quick document to help you learn and remember the important commands for controlling Safari with [msd] version 1.3. These same commands work with MacSpeech Dictate 1.2 but if you're using that you should update to version 1.3 immediately - it's free to do so and will only enhance your dictation experience.

This list doesn't show you all the commands which are available for Safari - just the ones that I think you're likely to use very frequently. It also doesn't show the global commands which are available in Safari as they are in all other applications - there are already command lists and a cheat sheet for the globals. That list is marked as for version 1.2.1 but also works with Dictate version 1.3.

The sheet is a half page format that you can easily print out and refer to while you work. I'm making a PDF available for easy printing, and a version in the original Pages '08 format for those who might want to edit it for themselves. I've also created versions in both A4 and US Letter page sizes, which should cover everybody's standard page sizes.

These documents aren't in any way meant to replace the Dictate User's Manual - every Dictate user really should read the manual, even if you're not the "manual reading type". Trust me, you'll get far better use of Dictate if you have read the manual! But nobody's memory is perfect, especially for a program with so many commands, so I've made these cheat sheets to go with the manual.

If you edit these for yourself, let me know what you come up with - I'd love to see.

- Ricky Buchanan

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Mail.app Commands Cheat Sheet for MacSpeech Dictate 1.2.1

This list doesn't show you all the commands which are available for Mail.app - just the ones you're likely to use many times a day. It also doesn't show the global commands which are available in Mail.app as they are in all other applications - there are already command lists and a cheat sheet for the globals.

If you edit these for yourself, let me know what you come up with - I'd love to see.

- Ricky Buchanan

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MacSpeech Dictate Global Commands List & Cheat Sheet for 1.2.1

[msd] is a great program but learning so many commands at once can be intimidating. I've put together two documents to help you learn and remember all the global commands found in Dictate version 1.2.1.

Dictate has two types of commands - global commands and application specific commands. The global commands work in all programs and the application-specific commands work only in a single application, for example Mail or iChat. These documents are only concerned with the global commands, which you'll need to know best and are likely to do most often. If there's a demand for similar lists for application specific commands I'll create these in the future.

First there's a "Global Commands List" which has all of the global commands, arranged according to their functions rather than alphabetically. It also has short explanatory text for the commands whose purpose isn't obvious, to remind you of their function. The list is 3 pages long - it's a complicated program! Here are versions in both Pages and PDF format, sized for US and A4 paper:

Second we have a "Globals Cheat Sheet". This has most of the global commands but not all of them, again grouped by function but with no explanatory text. It's formatted to fit on a single sheet of paper so you can print it out and use it as a memory aid when you can't remember the specific words for a command. Here are versions in both Pages and PDF format, sized for US and A4 paper:

I hope people find these useful. I have mine printed out and stuck up beside my computer screen and it's been a great help. Would you use a version with commands for the separate applications too? Let me know in the comments.

- Ricky Buchanan

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Voice-Activated Mouse Clicks with MacSpeech Dictate

One feature missing from the still-new [msd] program is the ability to control the mouse. This addition won't let you control the movement of the mouse, but we can teach you how to use your voice for mouse clicks. For those who have the ability to move the mouse, this could make the difference between a usable computer system and an unusable computer system.

To insert the commands to generate mouse clicks into MacSpeech Dictate you'll first need to download two files. Download the files by right clicking (or command clicking if you have a one-button mouse) on the files and selecting "Download Linked File" if you're using Safari, or selecting "Save Link As..." if you're using Firefox. Just leave them in your Downloads folder for now:

[Edit: I have put a zipped version of the Mouse Click commands here so we don't have so many problems with Safari changing the file name.]

First, double-click on the xtool-20.dmg file to open it up. Now you need to put the XTool.osax file in the directory /Library/ScriptingAdditions. Here's step by step instructions for those who need them - if you don't need the detailed instructions, just scroll down to the next section.

Open the Finder and select "Computer" from the "Go" menu, like this:

Reminder: You can click on any of the pictures here to see a larger image.

Your Finder window will switch to displaying all the disks on your computer. Unless you've renamed it, the main disk will be called Macintosh HD. Double-click on that disk to open it:

Now open the Library folder on the hard drive you just opened, again by double clicking it:

Now you need to create a new folder. Press shift-command-N or select "New Folder" from the Finder menu, and name the new folder ScriptingAdditions:

Double-click on your new folder to open it.

Now go back to the window you opened first - the XTool 2.0 that you downloaded. Drag the file XTool.osax from that window to your new ScriptingAdditions directory. When you're done, your new directory should look like this:

That part makes the mouse-clicking commands available to AppleScript.

Now we have to put the AppleScript commands into MacSpeech Dictate. If your mouse-clicks.commandstext file is still zipped - it will have a zipper on the icon and the word "ZIP" - then double-click it to extract the regular file which will have a plain icon which looks like a sheet of paper. This part's much easier - just open up MacSpeech Dictate and select "Command Import" from the "File" menu:

In the dialog box, go to the Downloads folder (or wherever you downloaded the file to) and select the file mouse-clicks.commandstext that you downloaded. MacSpeech Dictate will process for a moment, then you should see this dialog box:

That's all!

Congraatulations - you now have four new commands within MacSpeech Dictate. They can be used while you're in dictation mode or in command mode. These are the commands:

Mouse click
Mouse double click
Mouse right click
Mouse middle click

The names should be self explanatory, the first two commands use the left mouse button, the third command the right button (opens context menus) and the fourth command the middle button (not often used).

These commands won't move the mouse for you, the mouse clicks happen at wherever the current mouse location is. But if you want to take some strain off that mousing hand, not having to press the buttons is a good start.

We're working on commands to move the mouse, and undoubtedly the MacSpeech Dictate team are doing the same and these commands will feature in Dictate itself very soon. In the mean time, I think this is a useful stop-gap measure.

Special thanks for the information in this article goes to Everardo Verguizas who put most of this information together for me on the MacSpeech Dictate forums, Hiroto from the AppleScript Forum on Apple.com who found XTool which does the actual mouse clicking, and of course Jean-Baptiste Le Stang who wrote XTool in the first place and made it freely available. The only part I did was streamline the process and write this article. The original download site for XTool is http://lestang.org/osax/XTool/XTool-2.0.dmg.tgz, I have redistributed it here because I suspect many readers won't have Stuffit available to uncompress .tgz files and I wanted the process to be as simple as possible.

Please let us know how this works (or doesn't work) for you - leave a comment or three at the end of this post.

- Ricky Buchanan and Everardo Verguizas

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