Legacy musings

New in Version 2.1 -- Wizard updating of mapped dvc files!

You can see the version 5 Edit Command Wizard in action on this page.

First let's look at the built-in macros that are supplied with NatPro 6 by Dragon. One file, ...\Data\Dvc\enx\dvcu\general\system.dvc , is mapped into all users. What is the contents of this file? 34 Legacy dvc commands mostly consisting of MouseGrid and Asleep STATEs.

Every user is started off with mycmds.dat. What's in this file? About 177 commands, relating to Global Commands, NatSpeak, CChat and MSpaint. How many of these are Legacy dvc type commands? 170. How many are the new version 6 style? 7. So out of approximately 211 distributed Dragon voice macros, 7 are new style, 204 are legacy dvc style.

Dragon has no mechanism for creating new dvc commands. I really don't know what to say about this,.... except that the Registered version of SayWhatPro does! In this release, SayWhatPro requires this creation to be in a previously existing STATE, in other words in a Program and STATE that you already had dvc commands in. For most people, this should not be a significant restriction. In a future release, I will let the user supply a program name and window title.

One group of places that I found I wanted to be able to create simple legacy dvc commands, was for some of the NatSpeak windows themselves. As far as I know, it is not possible to create any new commands specifically for the MyCommands Editor or MyCommands Browser (dmcbrowser) windows. Solutions include making those macros Global, or importing legacy dvc files with those STATEs. After the following file is imported, it is easy to create more Legacy commands for these NatSpeak windows with the registered version of SayWhatPro.

MENU "NATSPEAK" {
	STATE "MyCommands Editor" {
		COMMAND "advanced scripting" {
			KEYS {
				{Alt+y}{home}{down 3}
			}
		}
	}

	STATE "MyCommands Browser" {
		COMMAND "place holder" {
			SCRIPT {
				SendKeys ""	
			}
		}
	}
}

You may think I am just a grumpy old man, discouraged that Dragon has made a wholesale uprooting of things which used to work just fine, substituting an unproven (to us NatSpeak veterans) way of doing things. Well, there is some truth there, but I also realize that the computer world never ceases to rush toward what I sometimes call "faster, higher, louder". I can learn to live (actually I'm thrilled) with the new command structures, for they do bring a very rich and powerful capability to voice commands. I was most distressed about the inability to dictate in the Advanced Scripting window (to get to these very rich and powerful capabilities), which inspired me to wrap the old foundation of version 5 SayWhat around this. The registered version of SayWhatPro lets you have access to the best of the old way, and the best of the new way both.

Registration page