Command Sequences

You can configure Vocola to allow speaking several commands in a row without pausing. For example, assume your commands allow you to say:

"3 Words Right"		to move the cursor 3 words to the right,
"2 Right"		to move the cursor 2 characters to the right, and
"Kill Char"		to delete 1 character.

If you wanted to speak these three commands in succession you would normally have to pause between commands, saying

"3 Words Right" (pause) "2 Right" (pause) "Kill Char".

With Vocola you don't need to pause, so you can say

"3 Words Right 2 Right Kill Char".

Once you get used to speaking command sequences, text editing by voice becomes faster and less frustrating.

Limitations on the number of commands that can be spoken in succession

Early versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (before version 7.0) can gracefully handle any number of commands spoken in succession.

Unfortunately, bugs in later versions (which Nuance has essentially refused to fix) can cause unacceptable performance if the maximum number of commands that can be spoken in succession is set too high, especially with large or complicated sets of commands. Because of this, Vocola allows you to set a maximum number of commands that can be spoken in succession in order to avoid these performance problems.

How to Enable and Disable Command Sequences

Vocola command sequences are disabled by default.

To enable command sequences for all files by default (in Vocola 2.6.4 or later), allowing up to M commands to be spoken in succession, create/open the file vocola.ini in your command file directory (where your Vocola commands live) and modify it to contain the line:

MaximumCommands=M

Then say "Load All Commands". If you are using an early version of DNS (before version 7.0), use 100 for M, a magic value which tells Vocola to allow an unlimited number of commands. Otherwise, you'll have to experiment with much smaller values; we recommend starting with 3 or 4.

To disable command sequences by default, proceed as above but with the line:

MaximumCommands=1

You can also override these defaults on a file by file basis by using the following Vocola statement:

$set MaximumCommands M;

Caveats

Note that only commands defined in the same .vcl file can be spoken in a single sequence. For me this causes occasional mistakes but is not a major limitation. And using include files can help. For example, if you find you want to sequence some of your global commands with commands local to Microsoft Word, you could put the global commands in a separate .vch file and include that file in both word.vcl and _vocola.vcl.

Likewise commands defined for different contexts cannot be spoken in a single sequence. You may, however, combine commands defined for one context with commands defined for the global context.

You might think command sequences would lead to mistakes when an unexpected combination of commands is recognized, but in practice I have not found this to be the case. It's a good idea to avoid single-word commands, but that's a good idea anyway.