USB assistive technology: mind the license!

Assistive technology doesn’t have to be an “official” Portable App for you to install it on a flash drive, nor does it have to be freeware. (But no, you cannot install Dragon NaturallySpeaking on a flash drive.) It depends primarily on  2 things: the ability to choose the flash drive letter for the install location (creating a folder on the drive if necessary) and, ideally, the option NOT to create any shortcuts on the desktop or start menu. It’s just cleaner that way, though shortcuts won’t hurt anything provided you install from your home computer. However, even after you’ve done this, there is still something you may have to watch out for if you’re trying to use public computers — particularly if those computers are on a queue that assigns you to a random machine, e.g. in a library.

There are 2 main types of licenses when you purchase software: per computer and per user. If you’re going to use your flash drive on a public computer, it’s better if your software has a per user license. This means that the license belongs to you, which in turn means that you can use that software on any computer you operate. The only requirement for using per user software on a flash drive is that when you plug it in, you will need to enter the activation code (and possibly the name you registered it with), so DON’T LOSE THAT. I keep a file on my flash drive containing all of my activation codes, so all I need to do is copy and paste. This step is both necessary and beneficial. It’s necessary because in this setup, nothing gets permanently saved to the registry, which is why you need to activate each time. It’s beneficial for the same reason, especially if you can’t use the same computer each time.

If you have USB software with the per computer license, trying to use different computers becomes dodgy if not impossible. When you activate per computer software, it saves that activation to the registry — or at least tries to — so that each time you plug your flash drive into that computer, you can run the software without activating. This is problematic on public machines for a couple of reasons.

First, depending on the security settings of the public computer you’re trying to use, it may not like your attempts to modify the registry by activating the software. The software may thus crash or otherwise not run properly. I suspect this is what happened with Typing Assistant, and is partially why I sought other software. Second, per computer licenses usually specify how many computers you’re allowed to run the software on. Typing Assistant, for example, limits its USB version to 3 computers. Even if you get the software to run properly, that kind of license assumes that you’ll always be able to use the same 3 computers. This does not allow for use in, say, a library where you are assigned to available machines at random. You will not always get the same 3 machines. Therefore, you will most likely be out of luck, which kind of defeats the purpose of portable software.

Per computer license agreements are almost always specified at the outset, so that you can decide if that works for your circumstances. Sometimes, per user licenses are also specified, but sometimes they aren’t. For example, I didn’t know Turbo Type had a per user license until I copied the program folder to my flash drive and tried to use it a couple of times stick typing on friends’ machines, and was pleasantly surprised. It may be that per user licenses are a given unless otherwise specified, but I would be careful in making that assumption. The best thing to do is try the demo of your program, if one exists, because it will usually explain the license to you in case you want to buy it when your time is up.

Control your DVD/CD drive with Dragon: AutoHotkey/Vocola

This script to control your CD/DVD drive by voice is optionally twofold. It requires AutoHotkey to assign it to a keypress, and Vocola or another Dragon NaturallySpeaking add-on to assign a voice command to that key if you wish. You would thus need to be running both for the latter to work. (See Product Sites sidebar to download.) If you don’t have an add-on program, you can do this by running only the AutoHotkey script and vocally pressing the key. Choose a key that you don’t use very often; mine is the | (vertical bar). If you absolutely need that key for something, exclude the application that requires it. (E.g. IfWinExist [, WinTitle, WinText, ExcludeTitle, ExcludeText]).

Telling Dragon to press that key or its command will both eject and close the tray, depending on its current position. I did try to do this using only Vocola, but AutoHotkey made it easier because it has that as a built-in script in its list of commands.

The AutoHotkey script:

|::
Drive, Eject
if A_TimeSinceThisHotkey < 1000
Drive, Eject,, 1
return

The Vocola script:

Drive (open | close) = {|};

Jarte free word processor now works with Dragon automatically

VERY IMPORTANT: Be aware that I am writing this as someone who uses a word processor almost exclusively for writing. If you try to insert a table, though, Jarte will give you a message saying that Dragon can’t handle that and link to Nuance support under the Help button so that you can tell Nuance there’s a problem. I think Carolina Road is being a bit optimistic about that, but what the hell, they’re trying — which is more than most developers would do. If you frequently use a word processor for anything other than word processing, Jarte (either free or Plus) may still not work for you. But if you mainly use word processors for writing, read on.

Most excellent news: the free version of the Jarte word processor (version 3.4) now works with Dragon NaturallySpeaking out-of-the-box, as does the $19 Plus version. (I’m using the free version right now because I had to do a reformat and the flash drive containing some of my backups malfunctioned.) Some kind person set the Detect DNS value to 1 by default, and the Settings.ini file repairs itself on restart if there’s a problem. With that in mind, I’m going to give a more thorough review of Jarte than the scattered mentions I’ve given in the past. Forgive the occasional repetition.

NOTE: You need to be using the Minimal layout in order to access the menu toolbar by name. Choosing the “use alternate main menu” option (Tools — O) gives you more menus to work with, such as Tabs, Counts, Options and Zoom, and moves Paragraph into its own menu instead of being under the Font menu. Note that to choose an option from the menus, you still need to say the first letter of the option and/or Enter.

General program remarks: You probably won’t need the spellchecker much if you’re using Dragon, but if you want it, you can navigate it by pressing F7 then using the arrow keys and Enter. The free version does not have the full autocorrect function — often used for shorthand — but if you’re using Dragon exclusively, you likely also won’t need the shorthand very much.

My dictation is very quick and accurate, and selection, correction, scratching, and general navigation (new paragraph, new line, go to top/bottom/end of line, insert before/after, etc.) commands work perfectly. You cannot select sentences, but you can use the command “select <word> through <word> <punctuation>.” The quick formatting commands in Dragon 10 don’t work, but you can still select the words you want to format and give the keypress commands, or use Vocola or other Dragon add-on commands.

I like Jarte because it’s very minimalist, and there’s no visual clutter to get in my way; I can concentrate on the words as they appear. Though Jarte does have an optional status bar (which you will need to have showing if you want to use certain Vocola commands), it does not slow down dictation or block it from view as the Word status bar does. Also, I have never had Jarte crash on me, as Word 2007 did/does.

Another good feature is the option to always reopen your last session. That way, if you’re working on a document over time, you don’t have to say “start <potentially multisyllabic document name>” if you don’t want to. I also like the tabs, so that you don’t have multiple windows on the bottom of your screen.

Jarte can handle Word documents as well as rich text format, and you can set it to be the default program for those file types if you wish. You may still need a compatibility pack for Word 2007; I haven’t checked. However, Jarte doesn’t support .odt yet.

One thing that Jarte doesn’t have is the ClearType font style, which I had gotten used to when I was using Word 2007. However, if you would like it, there’s a roundabout way of getting it — though not exclusively to Jarte itself. If you set ClearType for the whole operating system, you will have it using Jarte. The downside is that if you don’t want it in your whole operating system, you’ll have to turn it back off again when you’re done using Jarte. I don’t know if it’s worth the trouble for me to keep doing it, so I might just get used to the old font style again. These instructions for setting up ClearType apply to Windows XP, to which I am still clinging.

Right-click on the desktop and choose Properties.

Click Appearance.

Click Effects.

Tab to the checkbox about smoothing edges of screen fonts (it’s faster than saying the whole line). If it isn’t checked, press Space, then tab and choose ClearType, then OK, Apply and OK.

For me, this beats hell out of trying to tinker with OpenOffice Writer, and as I’ve said before, Carolina Road gets huge points for considering Dragon/speech recognition users right out of the box. For this reason, I may still purchase the Plus version again when I’m able, just to show that users of speech recognition are a viable market and will support developers who support them. Now, if someone would only develop an entire SAPI compliant Office alternative! (Besides WordPerfect, which I’m hearing isn’t so compatible anymore anyway.)

Sorry! I’m done, I promise.

My blog maintenance/reorganizing is probably playing hell with RSS. I do apologize…But I’m done reorganizing for a while. Promise.

How to get “smart punctuation” with word prediction/completion

This AutoHotkey script is a way to make punctuating more efficient when using word prediction or completion with automatic spacing enabled. Using this script, you don’t have to backspace in order to punctuate after predicting a word. When you press the punctuation, the script will backspace for you, insert the mark, then space. That’s the first part. The second part accounts for times you may type an unknown word or otherwise not choose a prediction, so there would be no trailing space. This part specifies that if a letter appears before the punctuation, the script will only insert the mark, then space. I left the quotation mark alone because of the different inside/outside punctuation rules. OpusApp restricts it to Word.

#IfWinActive ahk_class OpusApp

#Hotstring *
::.::
Send, {bs}. `
return

::,::
Send, {bs}, `
return

::?::
Send, {bs}? `
return

::!::
Send, {bs}{!} `
return

::)::
Send, {bs})
return

#Hotstring ? *
::.::
Send, . `
return

::,::
Send, , `
return

::?::
Send, ? `
return

::!::
Send, {!} `
return

How to “edit” the Turbo Type prediction dictionary

If you’re using TurboType in the US and a word you want is behind several British spellings, it can take a while for your word to move up a level. However, if you really use that word often, you can trick the dictionary (a.k.a. lexicon) into bumping it up a level or so. In my case, the word was “programs” — it was behind “programme” and “programmes” so that I had to type the whole word before it appeared. But now, “programs” appears third after typing p-r-o-g. Much better. To speed the prediction process, I did the following (after typing “programs” many times and getting tired):

1. Click the TurboType icon and choose Add New Word.

2. Type the word you want to move up (or bury, as the case may be). It’s not technically a new word, but that doesn’t matter.

3. Pick a frequency number — but don’t overdo it! To bury a word you don’t use, set it to 1. To accelerate a word you want, 2 is safest to start.  (If it turns out you over- or underestimated the number, you can go to TurboType’s program file, edit that entry in the custom_words file and save the change.)

This is the closest thing to editing the dictionary and/or getting unused predictions out of the way. I also want to remind you that certain phrases are found by typing inward a little, especially if you’re predicting with a 2-letter threshold. For example, typing n-o offers “now,” but the phrase “now that” appears only after typing n-o-w. “Because of” appears after typing b-e-c-a. Experiment.

Vocola commands for Win32Pad

# Voice commands for win32pad

new document = {Ctrl+n};
open document = {Ctrl+o};
save document = {Ctrl+s};
Go to line 1..50 = {Ctrl+g} $1 {Enter};
delete line 1..50 ={Ctrl+g} $1 {Enter} {Ctrl+y};
indent = {Tab};
unindent = {Shift+Tab};

Dragon/speech friendly Notepad replacement for voice coders

If you’ve tried to code by voice, you’ve likely realized that there are no compilers that support select and say. (If you found one, tell me, please.) Therefore, you dictate the code into Notepad, then copy and paste it into a compiler such as Visual C++, then try to compile and run it. The rub comes if Visual C++ turns up errors. It will helpfully give you the line numbers, and you may even be able to tell Dragon to go down the number of lines. The problem is that Visual C++ is MISERABLE when it comes to selecting and correcting text, and even dictating. Therefore, you have to go back to the original code in Notepad, find the errors there, fix them in Notepad, copy the document, go back into Visual C++, delete the code there, and paste the new code.

The problem with Notepad is that it doesn’t display line numbers; you have to count down the lines yourself. If you have a fair amount of code, your eyes may trick you and you might skip lines, making it rather tedious. But I found a program that might make it a little easier to dictate and vocally edit code. It’s the one Notepad replacement program out of I don’t know how many I tried that actually supports select and say: Win32Pad by Gennady Feldman. Even better, it has line numbering.

The line numbering is not turned on by default. It’s under View — Line Numbers. (The menus are vocally accessible as well. There are also keyboard shortcuts for most major functions.) Once you have turned on line numbering, it becomes easier to tell Dragon to go down or up some number of lines to find your error and correct it. Dragon’s own “go to line” command doesn’t work, but Win32Pad has its own shortcut, which you can access by saying “Edit,”then “go to line,” then saying the line number and OK. You could also tell Dragon to press Control G.

TurboType update: numbered

So I am using the new version of TurboType, which now numbers the word list from 1 to 3 for instant completion…not even a week after the suggestion. Responsive programmers continue to surprise me. In terms of basic prediction functionality, TurboType now rivals Penfriend in my opinion, and surpasses it in speed. What it doesn’t do I can do with AutoHotKey macros, which I’m working on.

Once again I have to say: what gives? Why don’t the less expensive options get more mentions — especially if they have fewer bugs and faster support? A program doesn’t have to cost $100+ for it to be good assistive technology. If it has the functions you need, what’s the problem? And if you only need the core, you’re not paying for features you don’t use. Sounds like something that deserves mention to me.

Turbo Type review: good word prediction, low cost

NOTE: Please see comments 10 and 11 for an explanation of how Turbo Type orders and learns suggestions. It may not be what you’re used to. SEE ALSO: How to edit the TurboType dictionary.

I think I have a new favorite program. I was looking for an alternative to Typing Assistant because the USB version is conflicting badly with some network setting or other. I could contact IT, but the point of a portable program is to avoid that. So, I went looking for something a little more compatible and found TurboType, which borders on a true word prediction program, not just a completion program. At any rate, it has shades of one, and for $20. (I recommend the paid version for work as well as home use because it learns word frequency and enables new words, starts at bootup if you choose, and has no session timer; you don’t need to restart after 2 hours.) You can install to a flash drive, though it will want to create a start menu folder anyway.

The dictionary is composed of core words (and phrases!) only, with a maximum of three choices per guess. Since the dictionary is so small, there is a greater chance the right word will be on it. If it isn’t, you can keep typing until it shows up, then accept automatically or choose with arrows or numbers. When the word you want is highlighted, you can press Space, Enter or Tab (you can select all of those options at one time, enabling completion from any area of the keyboard) and the program will insert it instantly, along with a space if you choose. The suggestion window is transparent and even the Normal font setting is large by default, which is WONDERFUL. I didn’t like peering at the Typing Assistant list all the time; even its large font is kind of small.

So, for example, I type “so” (the prediction requires at least 2 letters) and am offered “so,” “some,” and “something.” All very likely candidates, and no extraneous suggestions. On my keyboard it is easiest to accept the first choice with Space. If none of the choices work, press Escape.

You can add words or phrases either individually or in bulk. To add a single entry, click the taskbar icon (there is unfortunately no keyboard shortcut yet, so either use Mouse Keys or Windows Key — Escape — Tab — Tab to get the tray focus, then press the arrows until the icon is focused and press Enter. On the menu, choose Add New Word and follow the prompt. To add a list, enter it in Notepad or a similar text editor and copy it. Then go to where you installed the program and open Custom Words. Paste the list and put commas after the words, immediately followed by a “frequency of use” number from 1 to 3 — rarely, sometimes and often respectively. Choose carefully because this will affect how your suggestions are ordered.

If you don’t want TurboType to suggest words in certain programs, there IS a filter — the PC World reviewer was mistaken. Choose Customize from the menu, and a checkbox saying “Do NOT suggest” is right there. Just add the process you want it to ignore, e.g. _firefox.exe. Simple.

You can create abbreviations, but you need to press Control Space to expand them. Therefore, I would save abbreviations for sentences or very specific information, instead of for shortening single words — the prediction works so well that you don’t need to do that.

In sum, this program has promise — so much, in fact, that it could rival big names like Soothsayer and Penfriend, which are more expensive but, ironically, much slower and potentially more bloated. Please support the developer so that Turbo Type can keep improving — $20 beats $100+.