Keystroke Commands
Keystroke Commands
Most of the everyday commands you will need are simple -- "When I say this,
send these keystrokes." For example, the following command types the word "Greetings"
when you say "Hello World":
Vocola: Hello World
= Greetings;
Say: Hello World
Sent: Greetings |
In most cases the keystrokes you want to send will use modifier key sequences
to control a particular application. For example, most Windows applications
perform a "Copy" operation when you hold down the "Control" key and type the
letter "c". The next command uses the phrase "Copy That" to invoke such a "Copy"
operation:
Vocola: Copy That
= {Ctrl+c};
Say: Copy That
Sent: {Ctrl+c} |
The Vocola syntax for specifying modifier key sequences such as {Ctrl+c}
is borrowed from the Dragon
Macro Language, which describes the syntax. (See the discussion on pp. 13-14 and the table on pp. 116-117, or just absorb it from the Vocola examples.)
Each Vocola command contains a series of terms (indicating
what is said) and a series of actions (indicating what is done),
separated by "=" and terminated by ";". In this section
the terms are words and the actions are keystrokes; later sections introduce
other possibilities. |
Because Windows applications allow keyboard control of almost everything, you
can usually write a keystroke command to do what you want. The next example
tells the Netscape 4 mail program to use its HTML editor (rather than the plain
text editor) for composing messages:
Vocola: HTML Editor
= "{Alt+e}e{Shift+Tab}{Down 8}{Tab}{Up}{Enter}";
Say: HTML Editor
Sent: {Alt+e}e{Shift+Tab}{Down 8}{Tab}{Up}{Enter} |
Here's how it works:
| {Alt+e} | Open the "Edit" menu |
| e | Choose the "Preferences..." menu item, raising the Preferences
panel |
| {Shift+Tab} | Move back one field in the panel, to the "Category" list |
| {Down 8} | Move down 8 lines, to the "Formatting" category |
| {Tab} | Move forward one field in the panel, to "Message formatting" |
| u | Choose the top radio button ("Use the HTML editor to compose messages") |
| {Enter} | Hit the "OK" button |
|