[MV] Re: Ilisten and ViaVoice

[JSenecal at aol.com]

>My idea is to dictate programming phrases into an xTalk type language 
>[SuperTalk, Hypertalk, old Lingo for Director 6]. That means sort of 
>a pigeon english. However, there may be a way to fool the xTalk 
>interpreter into parsing non printing characters and so the variables 
>could be more like Johns+cool+variable where the + is a substitute 
>for some non printing character in this post.
>
>Example
>put it into Johns cool variable   [blanks are really some weird non 
>printing character]
>[ SuperTalk currently requires Johns_cool_variable or JohnsCoolVariable ]

You don't need to fool xTalk, there are easy ways to do this with Macro 
commands.

For ViaVoice, make a voice macro that combines the capitalize next word 
macro and the suppress next space macro into a single command. Then use 
this command between words making up a variable. For example, I use 
"Shift Space" for this (combination of "Shift Key" and "No Space"), so I 
would say:
put it into Johns Shift-Space cool Shift-Space variable

For iListen, I made mode variables that set or reset Caps, uppercase, 
lowercase, and no spaces modes all with one command. Variable Mode turns 
on Caps and no spaces modes, and turns off uppercase and lowercase modes. 
Normal Mode turns off everything. So for iListen I would say:
put it into Johns Variable-Mode cool variable Normal-Mode


While either ViaVoice or iListen could do this. If you don't already have 
one of these programs, I'd recommend iListen 1.6.2 as the best program 
for this task, because it allows you to directly dictate and correct in 
any OS X native application. ViaVoice allows dictation into any 
application, but can only correct in the supplied SpeakPad application. 
So you either need to switch to SpeakPad to do "training" when it don't 
get a phrase right, or dictate into SpeakPad then cut and paste into your 
development application.

Neither program is perfect, and both have their quirks, but for me, the 
quirks in the latest version of iListen are easier to live with.

Joe Senecal