SECTION SIX CURSOR KEYS AND HOT KEYS 6.1: INTRODUCTION Earlier, when you first accessed Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel via the CTRL-\ key, you undoubtedly noticed several options we haven't discussed yet. Two of them are "3: Hot keys" and "4: Cursoring." In this section of your Vocal-Eyes user's guide we will delve into each of these submenus. First, we'll show you how to advise Vocal-Eyes as to what screen information you would like read when you press any of the cursor keys. Next, we'll walk you through the amazingly easy process of re-defining any of the voice hot keys, such as "read character," "read word," "read line," "read sentence," "read paragraph," and many more. 6.2: DEFINING THE CURSOR KEYS We first discussed the cursor keys back in Section 3 of this manual. We told you that they include such keys as the LEFT, RIGHT, UP and DOWN ARROW keys, the TAB key, the BACKSPACE and DELETE keys, PGUP, PGDN, HOME and END. We mentioned that the reason these keys are known collectively as cursor keys is because in most applications programs pressing any of them affects the placement of the cursor in some way. We demonstrated this fact with the four cursor keys. We showed you how pressing any of these keys in most application programs causes your cursor to be moved one space left or right, or one screen line up or down. You may also recall that when you pressed these keys, not only did the key get passed along to DOS or your applications program, but Vocal-Eyes also voiced the new current character, in the case of the LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys, or the new screen line, in the case of the UP and DOWN ARROW keys. But what if you don't want to hear the new screen line whenever you press the DOWN ARROW key? What if you only want to hear the new current character? Or maybe you'd like to hear the new screen column and row position of your cursor? Well, Vocal-Eyes allows you to define what is read whenever you press any of the cursor keys. Here's how. 6.3: THE CURSORING MENU Use the CTRL-\ keystroke to call up Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel. Cursor down to option 4 and then press ENTER. (Or, alternatively, simply type 4 and then press ENTER.) Did you hear Vocal-Eyes voice "Cursoring Key Definition 1 LEFT character after?" Recall that when you pressed the LEFT ARROW key before in DOS or your applications program, Vocal-Eyes allowed your program to use the LEFT ARROW key as it saw fit and then popped in just long enough to announce your new current character. This was very useful, since DOS uses this key to move your cursor one character to the left. But what if your particular program doesn't move the cursor one space to the left when you press the LEFT ARROW key? Perhaps you're working in a spread sheet that uses the LEFT ARROW key to move one entire cell to the left. Or maybe pressing LEFT ARROW causes your program to display an entire new screen. In either of these cases you would want something more than simply the new current character read when you press LEFT ARROW. Do this. Press ENTER from the LEFT character prompt. Vocal-Eyes will repeat the current key voice assignment. Now, press the SPACE BAR. Did you hear Vocal-Eyes say "Previous word?" You have just changed what Vocal-Eyes will voice whenever the LEFT ARROW key is pressed. Now, every time you press LEFT ARROW instead of hearing the new current character you'll hear the word to the left of the cursor. Press the SPACE BAR again. Now every time you press the LEFT ARROW key your program will receive and act on the LEFT ARROW cursoring key and then Vocal-Eyes will read the new current word. Press the SPACE BAR repeatedly to examine all the various options. Notice that you can select any of the following: Prior character before, prior character after, character before, character after, previous word, word, next word, line, sentence, paragraph, to end of line, light bar, box, cursor pos, field data, field name, field name & data, the current screen window or any selected window from 0 through 49, activate any of the 10 standard windows 0-9, load a RAM .SET, or link. You may also, if you wish, choose to leave the key undefined. Notice that some of the options end with either "before" or "after". Normally, when you press a cursoring key, Vocal-Eyes will send the keystroke to the application and then speak the specified information. However, in some cases, once Vocal-Eyes allows the cursoring key to pass to the application, the application will remove the information you wanted to hear. For example, the backspace key normally moves the cursor to the left and deletes the character. If Vocal-Eyes first sent the backspace character to the application and then read the character under the cursor, it would never be able to read the deleted character. If the cursoring option contains the word 'before', Vocal-Eyes handles it a bit differently. Prior char before for example will first get the character to the left of the cursor and save it internally for later usage. Then Vocal-Eyes will send the actual keystroke to the application. Finally, it will voice the character it saved. This is a good choice for the backspace key. In this case, Vocal-Eyes can get the character before it has been removed from the screen. Char before will do a similar thing. This function will first cause Vocal-Eyes to get the character under the cursor and then send the keystroke to the application. Finally, it will read the saved character. Prior char before and char before are the only two that first get the desired character and then send the keystroke to the application. All of the other options will first send the keystroke to the application and then speak the specified information. Let's talk for a moment about a few of the other options. Choosing either sentence or paragraph will cause Vocal-Eyes to voice the current sentence or paragraph every time you press the LEFT ARROW key. Vocal-Eyes will do its level best to determine exactly what you mean by a sentence or a paragraph. Admittedly, it is not likely that you will want to hear your current sentence or paragraph read every time you press the LEFT ARROW key. You may, however, want to hear the new location of your applications cursor. Select Cursor position if this is indeed what you would like. Perhaps you're working in a spread sheet or database manager in which pressing the LEFT ARROW key moves you one data field up or to the left. In such cases you would want to select either the "Field Data," "Field Name" or "Field Name and Data" options. The "Field Data" option will instruct Vocal-Eyes to look on either side of your applications cursor and voice the block of data that contains the cursor and that appears different from other areas of the screen. Most spread sheet or database managers highlight, alter colors or inverse the video of the current data field. With the "Field Data" option selected Vocal-Eyes should pick them up nicely. Even if your application program does not use colors to distinguish the field name from the field data, Vocal-Eyes offers another approach which will be discussed in section 9. Often that same database manager will highlight, alter the colors or inverse the video of the current field name as well. Would you like to hear the new field name voiced whenever you press the LEFT ARROW key? Select the "Field Name" option by pressing the SPACE BAR until it appears on the LEFT ARROW prompt line. Vocal-Eyes will now seek out areas of your screen other than your current field which have a different video mode than the rest of the screen and read the information which is contained within. The next 2 options on your cursor voice assignment rotor are "Current Window" and "Speak Window". We haven't talked very much about windows thus far. Suffice it to say that later we'll show you how to define any or all of these 50 windows to read any portion of your screen from a single character up to and including the full screen display. You will then be able to select whichever window you would like to hear read every time you press the LEFT ARROW key. For example: You could define Window 9 to read your applications program status line, which always appears in the same place on the screen. Then you could select Window 9 as your LEFT ARROW voice assignment key. Every time you press the LEFT ARROW key, the keystroke will be passed along to your program and then Vocal-Eyes will read the updated status line. If you select "Speak Window" as the option and press ENTER, Vocal-Eyes will prompt: Window To Speak: 0 Simply type the number of the window you wish read from 0 - 49 and press ENTER. Vocal-Eyes will remember the number and offer it as the default if you should press ENTER on this option again. By default, the window to speak will be window 0. If you press ENTER instead of a number, Vocal-Eyes will keep the window number supplied as the window to speak. The final three choices available are: Activate Window, Load RAM SET and Link. Each will be described below: Activate Window This option works just like the above Speak Window option but instead of speaking the window, it will make the specified window the currently selected window. You will be prompted for the window number just as you were for the speak window option except this will only accept a window number from 0-9 and you do not have to press the ENTER key. Since only the standard windows 0-9 can be active, you are not allowed to enter an extended window 10-49. Switching to a window can be very useful in certain instances. The next section of this manual will talk in much more detail about windows. Load RAM SET If you select this option and press ENTER you will be prompted as follows: RAM Set To Switch: 0 Simply type the RAM location which contains the .SET file you wish loaded when you press the associated cursoring key. No ENTER is required after typing the number from 1-9. Of course, you must have allocated any RAM locations and have the correct .SET file loaded there before the cursoring key can actually be used. The power of loading a new .SET file means the sky is the limit. With the press of a single cursoring key, you can have a complete new voice environment load instantly. You are limited only by your imagination. RAM locations will be described in section 12. Link The final option in the cursoring menu setup is link. This allows you to "link" or connect two of the standard cursor options with one cursoring key. For example, you could first speak window 9 and then the new character under the cursor. Or you could switch to window 3 and speak the current box. It simply allows two commands to be issued instead of the usual one. Once you have selected the link option and pressed ENTER, a box will pop up in the center of the screen. For example, if you are defining ALT-F12 as link, the following would be displayed: Alt-F12 Link Structure First Command : Undefined Second Command : Undefined The first line of the box will contain the cursoring key itself. The next line will display the first command and the final line will display the second Command. Verbally, you will hear the cursoring key followed by "link structure" and finally "First Command: undefined". You are now being prompted for the first command of the link structure. Simply rotor to the desired setting just as you did before. The only option not available for either of the two commands is link. Once you press ENTER from the first command, you will be prompted for the second command. Again, rotor the setting to the desired command and press ENTER. If you setup a cursoring key as LINK but only define one of the two commands the cursoring key will not show as LINK but as the single command. The link option should only be used if you wish to do two functions with a single cursoring key. If a key has been setup as LINK and you wish to see what the two commands are, simply press ENTER while on LINK. Vocal-Eyes will pop up the same box as before but instead of both commands being undefined, they will hold your previous commands. Of course, in certain cases, you may not want Vocal-Eyes to do anything special when you press the LEFT ARROW key. If this is the case, press the SPACE BAR until you reach the "Undefined" option. Or a quicker way is to press the DELETE key. Remember this option will always reset a toggle or rotary option to a known state. In this case the know state is "Undefined." As you have seen, the SPACE BAR will move through all of the options in a forward direction. You can use the BACKSPACE key to travel in a backward direction if you wish. Between the SPACE BAR, BACKSPACE key and the DELETE key, you should be able to select the desired setting with little difficulty. Remember, you may have to press ENTER if you select SPEAK WINDOW, ACTIVATE WINDOW or LOAD RAM SET. This is so you can specify the exact window or RAM location. If you press the up or down arrows instead of ENTER, Vocal-Eyes will use the previous setting for the desired task. If there was no previous setting, a value of 0 will be assumed. Now that you've made your selection, do one of five things to complete the process of assigning voice response to your LEFT ARROW key. 1. Press ENTER. If you have selected SPEAK WINDOW, ACTIVATE WINDOW or LOAD RAM SET, Vocal-Eyes will prompt for the specific window or RAM location. Simply accept the default with another press of ENTER or type the new number. The speak window option will allow a window number from 0 to 49 and you must press ENTER to accept the number. Activate window and Load RAM SET will only accept a number from 0 to 9 and the press of the ENTER key is not needed. 2. Press DOWN ARROW . This will lock in your selection and move you down to the next key to assign. 3. Press UP ARROW. This will lock in your selection and move you up to the previous key to assign. 4. Type the number of the next selection you wish to edit and press ENTER. This will lock in your current selection and move you directly to the specified option number. 5. Press ESCAPE. This will lock in your selection and return you to the main Voice Control Panel menu. 6. Press ALT-X or ALT-ESCAPE. This will lock in your selection and return you directly to your applications program. Are you still in the Cursoring submenu? If not, return to this submenu now. Use your DOWN ARROW key to move through the various keys that can be given individual voice response. Notice that all of the standard cursor keys are among the choices, as well as the DELETE key, the BACKSPACE key and the ENTER key. Regarding the first two of these: Remember, earlier, when you encountered "Prior Character before" as an option? Well, here are a couple of instances where you might want to select "prior character before." Also notice that you can choose to give the ENTER key a voice assignment. Recall from the previous section that you can use the Keyboard selection on Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel's main menu to instruct Vocal-Eyes to announce "ENTER" every time you press the ENTER key. Now, using the cursoring submenu, you can add additional voice response. You can, for example, instruct Vocal-Eyes that every time you press the ENTER key you would like to hear "ENTER," followed by the new cursor location, the new current character, word, line, sentence, paragraph, field data, field name, both field data and field name, the entire screen or any portion of your screen you'd care to mark out in any of 50 screen windows, activate any of the 10 standard windows, load a new .SET file from any of the RAM locations or even link any two of these commands together. Are you beginning to see the possibilities? Examine the various cursor assignment options and the default settings we've provided for several of them. Keep the defaults for now, or experiment with the settings to find what works best for you. Remember, even though you have added voice features to these keys, their original meaning will be passed along to DOS or your applications program before the desired voice response is given. After all, what would be the sense in making one of your ARROW keys, your TAB key, or any of the other Cursoring keys talk if they were prevented from doing what they were supposed to do in the first place? 6.3.1: DEFINING YOUR OWN CURSORING KEYS While cursoring through all of the cursoring options, you will probably notice that many of them are undefined. You can use these for your own specific needs. There are 46 places for keys that you could assign a voice response to-- far more than any applications program would be likely to use. Have you assigned a voice response to several of the cursoring keys? Do you have extra spots, keys you've left unassigned? You can turn any key into a sort of cursoring key by way of this Cursoring submenu. As with all other cursor keys, the key will be passed along to your applications software. But then you get the added bonus of user definable voice response. Here's how it works. Let's say you are using a database manager that uses the ALT-N key to move you down to the next field. You could press ALT-N every time you want to move down one field, and then press your read current field hot key to see what's there. But here's an easier way to accomplish the same task with a single keystroke. Make sure you are in the Cursoring submenu. Locate a key you've left unassigned because your database manager doesn't need it. Remember, there are 46 options and over half of them are not defined. Are you at the prompt for an unassigned key? If so, press ALT-N. Notice what just happened. Your unneeded cursoring key vanished from the menu and ALT-N was substituted in its place. Now, press the SPACE BAR or BACKSPACE key enough times to rotor through to the "Field name & data" option. Press ALT-X to exit the Voice Control Panel and try using your ALT-N key. Notice how now, not only does pressing this key move you down one field, but it also reads your new field name and the contents of the field, the field data. Here's another example of how this feature can assist in your work with the PC. For this example, let's say you are using a spread sheet and that pressing the F1 key causes a context sensitive help screen to appear. The help screen always occupies the first 12 lines of your PC's screen display. You could create a window to read the first 12 lines of your screen, then, every time you want help, you could press the F1 key and follow that with a press of your read window hot key. But why not simplify the process as follows? Find a cursoring key your spread sheet doesn't use. Go to that key in the Cursoring submenu. Press the F1 key. Now, press the SPACE BAR or BACKSPACE enough times to rotor through to the Speak Window option. Now press ENTER. Vocal-Eyes will prompt for the window to be voiced. Simply type a number from 0 to 49 (followed by ENTER) indicating the window you wish read when the F1 key is pressed. From now on, every time you press the F1 help key, your help screen will appear and Vocal- Eyes will automatically read the window containing it. Feel free to setup all 46 cursoring options if you like. 6.3.2 MORE ABOUT THE CURSORING MENU What if you have setup a cursoring key and later wish to undefined it. Well, you could get to the entry containing the key and press ENTER. This will place you in the column which decides what should be spoken. You can then press the DELETE key to undefined what should be spoken. You could also simply press the DELETE key while on the line containing the key you wish to remove. For example, lets say you don't want the TAB entry we supplied as a default. First get to the option either by using the arrow keys or simply typing 17ENTER. Now press the DELETE key. Vocal-Eyes will say Undefined and move you to option 18:Shift-TAB. If you cursor back to option 17, it will say 17:Undefined. Now what if you wanted to define the arrow keys, BACKSPACE, SPACE BAR or the DELETE key? Lets go back to option 17, the one we just undefined. Now try and define the SPACE BAR. What happened? That's right, Vocal-Eyes thought you wanted to go to the next entry. In order to define one of the cursoring command keys, you must first proceed the character with a press of the ` (grave accent). Go back to option 17 and now press the grave accent and then the SPACE BAR. Vocal-Eyes now said 'SPACE Cursor Position.' It defaulted to Cursor Position because this is what was left over from the TAB key. You can rotor through till you get the option you want spoken each and every time you press the space bar. If you want to define the grave accent key itself, simply press it twice. Do you need to add a voice feature to the ALT-X key? Remember, this is your fast exit key from the Voice Control Panel. Pressing ALT-X while in the Cursoring submenu will not turn this key into a cursoring key. It will return you to your application program. Unless, of course, you press the ` (grave accent) key first and then follow immediately with a press of the ALT-X key. As we have mentioned previously, the ` (grave accent) key is your Voice Control Panel's special bypass to next key hot key. It works exactly like your bypass to next key hot key, but it only works when you're in Review Mode or the Voice Control Panel. Do you need to assign a voice feature to the ` key? If so, simply press the key twice--the first time to bypass the next key and the second to actually type the key. Remember, though, the ` bypass key is only used when you're in Review Mode or the Voice Control Panel. For all other occasions use your bypass to next key hot key which we will talk about later on. Don't forget, when you're done, to use the Files option on the main control panel menu to save your changes so they'll still be there the next time you run Vocal-Eyes. 6.4: THE HOT KEYS MENU Do you have all of your cursoring keys set to the voice response of your preference? If so, then you're ready to move on to the next group of keys that can be set to elicit the voice response of your choice. First, let's discuss the difference between a cursoring key and a Vocal- Eyes hot key. Both may have one of a number of different voice features assigned to them. The difference is in how your applications program treats them. Cursoring keys are passed along to DOS or your applications program. Your program acts on the keystroke, and then Vocal-Eyes pops in just long enough to voice your new current character, line, field data, screen window, etc. A Vocal-Eyes hot key, on the contrary, is a key that is set to invoke a specific voice feature every time it's pressed. Vocal- Eyes retains the keystroke, and does not allow it to affect your underlying software in any way. Pressing your DOWN ARROW key may cause Vocal-Eyes to read your new current screen line, but only after your program has received and acted on the DOWN ARROW keystroke. Pressing CTRL-L will also read your current screen line, but Vocal-Eyes will keep this "hot key" keystroke all to itself. By now you're familiar with the various read previous, current and next hot keys we first introduced you to back in Section 3 of this manual. The time has come to introduce you to the other hot keys. If you're not presently in the Voice Control Panel, press CTRL-\ to get there now. Cursor over to option three, Hot Keys. Press ENTER. Did you hear Vocal-Eyes say "Hot Key Definition 1: Prior Char Control-B?" Recall that Control-B is your read previous character hot key. But maybe you'd prefer that this hot key be ALT-B. If this is indeed the case, go ahead and press ALT-B now (hold down the ALT key and press the letter B). What happened? Did you hear Vocal-Eyes repeat your keystroke and then move down to hot key 2: Char? Use your UP ARROW key to go back to hot key 1. Notice that now, instead of Control-B, your read previous character hot key has been changed to ALT-B. Would you like to change it back to Control-B? All you need to do is press CTRL-B. Give it a try now. Use your DOWN ARROW key to cursor your way through the first 15 hot key options. You probably recognize all of them as the read character, word, line, sentence and paragraph hot keys we first introduced you to back in Section 3 of this manual. We told you then that you'd be able to reassign any and all of your hot keys in accordance with your own personal needs and preferences. Are there any here you'd like to change? Go ahead and do it now. Press ESCAPE or ALT-X to return you to DOS or your applications program and take your new hot keys for a test drive. Are there some hot keys among these first 15 that you never use? Perhaps you're working with a spread sheet, in which case you probably have little use for the read paragraph hot keys. Would you like to free up these keys so you can use them for other Vocal-Eyes functions? Simply cursor down to the item you wish to remove from the list. Press the delete key. You'll hear Vocal-Eyes say "Undefined" and then move along to the next hot key choice. Since this command is undefined, (no keyboard sequence has been assigned to it) it is not available. You therefore do not have to worry about a conflict with your application. If a hot key is defined to a keystroke which your application program requires, Vocal-Eyes wins out. Does this mean you would never be able to use the application key? Not at all. Later you will learn how to temporally bypass the hot key allowing your application to see the keystroke. Move down to hot key 16. Use your DOWN ARROW key, if you like, but a faster way to get there is to type in the number 16 and then press ENTER. Notice that hot keys 16 through 19 are for read functions we haven't talked about yet. Option 16 says "Top Cursor." This is your Vocal-Eyes hot key to read from the top of your screen all the way down to your current cursor location. Option 17, on the contrary, is your Vocal-Eyes hot key to read everything on your PC's screen from your cursor on down to the bottom. What do you think option 18, "Left Cursor" does? That's right. It reads everything on your current screen line that lies to the left of your cursor. And of course option 19, "Cursor Right" is your Vocal- Eyes hot key to read everything on your current screen line that lies to the right of your cursor. Notice that none of these four hot keys have been assigned. Each says "Undefined." Do you have some good ideas as to which keys you'd like to assign to each of these read functions? Here are a few things to keep in mind when deciding which keys to assign as Vocal-Eyes hot keys. First, stay away from all the lower and upper case letters, numbers and marks of punctuation. You could, say, assign a lower-case "t" to read the "top" of your screen, but then the next time you tried to type "cat" what you'd end up doing would be to type "ca" and then command Vocal-Eyes to read the top part of your screen. True, you could use your CTRL-N bypass key, but do you really want to have to do that every time you need to type the letter "t?" It's probably a good idea to stick to the special PC shift states of CONTROL and ALT. And of course there are always the function keys from F1 through F12 and their various SHIFT, CONTROL and ALT shift states. Does your applications software use all of these keys? If not, why not make use of a few of them for Vocal-Eyes hot keys. Another thing to keep in mind when assigning or reassigning Vocal-Eyes hot keys is that it's only one per customer. Your first thought might be to assign CTRL-T to read the top half of your screen. Recall, however, that CTRL-T is already the hot key to read the next sentence. You cannot assign the same keystroke to two different voice functions. Vocal-Eyes will beep and say "Keystroke already defined" if you try. Take care, then, when assigning a hot key that the keystroke you're planning to use hasn't already been assigned elsewhere in the hot key submenu. If it has, and you'd really prefer to use it here, first return to the original use of this key and reassign the function to another, unused key, or press DELETE to unassign the feature. In the above example, before we could assign the CTRL-T to read the top half of our PC's screen, we would have to do one of two things. We could: 1. Reassign the Read next sentence hot key by moving to that option and typing in a new keystroke. 2. Change the read next sentence hot key to "Undefined." Do this by moving to the read next sentence prompt and then pressing the delete key. Vocal-Eyes will respond "Undefined," then allow you to proceed with other changes. 6.5: MORE HOT KEYS Cursor down to hot key selection 20. Notice that selections twenty through twenty-nine assign the hot keys to read the first ten screen windows from zero through nine. Your read screen hot keys can also be reassigned by you, the user. Perhaps instead of ALT-0 through ALT-9 you'd prefer your read window hot keys were ALT-A through ALT-J. Accomplishing this would be as easy as typing in the new keystrokes as each window prompt appears in the hot key submenu. Be sure, however, that no other hot keys have already been assigned to any of these keys. Vocal-Eyes actually offers 60 windows. Windows zero through nine are considered the standard windows, windows ten through forty-nine are known as the extended windows and the final ten represented by A-J are known as the hyperactive windows. Windows zero through nine (standard windows) are very special. This is why we have given you the ability to assign a unique keystroke to read each of the ten windows. However, you may at times want to read the extended windows ten through forty-nine. It would not be practical to assign 50 unique keystrokes to read each of the 50 windows. This is why we have added option 30: Any Window. If you assign this hot key a keystroke and press it, Vocal-Eyes will prompt, "Window to read:." At this point, you can type a number from zero to forty-nine followed by ENTER. Vocal-Eyes will then read the contents of the specified window. If you type an invalid window number, Vocal-Eyes will give you the error message "Invalid window." This single hot key (Any Window) allows you to read all 50 windows including the standard windows 0-9. NOTE: In the next section of your Vocal-Eyes users' guide we're going to have a lot to say about windows. We'll be referring to the hot keys that invoke them as ALT-0 through ALT-9. It's probably a good idea for you to leave these hot key assignments alone for now in order to avoid a lot of confusion. If you are using WordPerfect you will be using a modified version of our defaults. We have setup from the factory more meaningful settings while in WordPerfect. For example, we have redefined one of the standard windows as ALT-S instead of an ALT number. Be aware of these changes if you are using a predefined .SET file. Cursor down to Option thirty-two. This option allows you to assign a hot key to read from your current cursor location all the way to the end of your document. Do you have Noteworthy, WordPerfect or some other word processing program loaded? If so, you'll certainly want to assign a hot key to this feature (your predefined WP.SET file already has ALT-R as the Read-to-End hot key). Now, in your word processor or text editor, when you press this key Vocal-Eyes will automatically press your DOWN ARROW key for you and read each line all the way to the end of your document. Would you like to cancel the "read to end" operation? If so, simply press ESCAPE. The reading will be stopped immediately and, if your synthesizer supports indexing, your cursor will be positioned at the beginning of the last word you heard. This word will be repeated, since you may have missed the last syllable or two when you hit the ESCAPE key. If your synthesizer does not support indexing, it may take a moment or two to catch up. The next several Hot Key menu options control voice functions we haven't discussed yet. Let's skip them for now and move down to Options forty and forty-one. We've already mentioned both of these options. In the explanation of cursoring keys above we mentioned that among the selections of voice functions you could select "Field Data" or "Field Name." We mentioned how handy these voice functions could be when working with many spreadsheet or database management software packages. Well, now you can assign hot keys to read either or both of these special display formats. What do you suppose is the difference between a hot key assigned to read the field data or name and a Cursoring key assigned to read the same textual unit? That's right--a Cursoring key will pass along the appropriate keystroke before reading the field data or name. The "read" field data or name hot key will read the information without affecting your underlying software in any way. The next option, 42: Any line, allows you to setup a hot key which will prompt you for the line number to be read. This, like all the hot keys, can be done in or out of review mode. Reading any line regardless if you are in or out of review mode, will never move your cursor position. When you press this hot key, Vocal-Eyes will prompt: Line to read: Simply type the line number you wish to hear and press ENTER. Vocal- Eyes will voice the line specified. 43: Spell Word Pressing this hot key will cause Vocal-Eyes to spell the current word under the cursor position. While spelling the word, the speech rate will be lowered by a factor of 2. For example, if your screen rate is set at 5, Vocal-Eyes will spell the word at a rate of 3. You can also spell the current word by pressing the read current word hot key twice. Pressing the read word hot key a third time will spell the word phonetically. 44: Forward sentence 45: Backward sentence Option 44 (Forward sent) and option 45 (Back sent) allow you to move through your document forward and backward by sentence. Assuming your applications programs moves the cursor using the four arrow keys such as a word processor, Vocal-Eyes can cause your applications program to automatically scroll up or down as required. This is a very handy way of reading up or down a document sentence by sentence. If your applications program already offers a way of moving by sentence then it would be better to make that keystroke a cursoring key defined to speak the sentence. However, very few applications programs offer you the ability to move by sentence so you are sure to enjoy this feature. If you are going to use this feature, if may be necessary to configure the current active window to only contain the lines and columns for which the data from the applications program can reside. For example, WordPerfect places a status line on line 25. Vocal-Eyes has know way of knowing this is a status line and may try to route the applications cursor to this line thinking it is part of your document. Of course, this can not be done so this would cause undesirable results. The solution with WordPerfect is to set a window from lines one to twenty-four. Now the sentence routing will only be relative to the top 24 lines, which is where your document data resides. As we mentioned earlier, we have already give you an environment for WordPerfect. We have setup all these windows for you. There is a file called 'WP.DOC' located on your Vocal-Eyes program disk which describes what we have done if your are using WordPerfect. Note: Because of the technique employed by Vocal-Eyes to determine the beginning and ending of a sentence, double spaced text will not work using these hot keys. If a document must be in double spaced format, we suggest that you create the document in single space and convert to double space right before printing. This way, your editing can be done in the simpler, single space format. 46: Forward paragraph 47: Backward paragraph Option 46 (forward para) and option 47 (back para) allow you to move through your document forward and backward just like the sentence routing above but by paragraph instead of by sentence. Because some paragraphs can be very large, this feature may not always work. Vocal-Eyes will attempt to get the entire paragraph on the screen. If the paragraph is too large to fit, only the top part of the paragraph will be read. Normally this is not a problem, but keep this in mind as you move through your document. The same limitations and suggestions for the sentence routing hold true for paragraph routing as well. 49: Time and date Option 49 (Time/date) allows you to assign a hot key which will speak the current time and date. The time and date spoken is retrieved directly from your computers time and date values. If these values are not set correctly, this hot key will not give the correct information. Those using the Sounding Board will not need this feature since the synthesizer also has a similar option. Cursor down to option 50. Notice that here you are presented with the current "read screen address" hot key. Would you like to change it? If so, go ahead and do it now. Pressing this hot key will cause Vocal-Eyes to give you the current applications cursor position in the form: Cx,Ly where x is the column number and y is the line number. Option 52 in the hot keys submenu allows you to assign a second Review Mode entry key. Remember, when we first discussed the concept of Review Mode, we told you about the fast review hot key via the ALT key? This review hot key should only be used within macros. As you can see, we have defaulted this keystroke to CTRL-ENTER. Section 16 will discuss macros and Vocal-Eyes in much more detail. If you ever wish to change the hot key to something other than CTRL-ENTER, here is where it would be done. Options 51, 54 and 55 on the hot key submenu are undoubtedly already familiar to you. They include the CTRL-X Momentary Silence hot key, the CTRL-\ Voice Control Panel entry hot key and the CTRL-N Bypass to next key hot key. Do any of these keys conflict with your applications program? Change any or all of them if you like. Be careful, however, not to leave the Menu Entry hot key in an unassigned state. Otherwise, when you exit the Voice Control Panel, there won't be any way for you to get back inside. Remember if you have interruptability on, even though you may have CTRL-X or some other key assigned as the momentary silence hot key, Vocal-Eyes will treat it as if it were undefined. Only if interruptability is off or set to Cursor Keys only will you be able to use the momentary silence hot key. The remainder of the hot keys will be described later in this manual. 6.6: THE SPECIAL ` BYPASS COMMAND KEY Let's say you're using a word processing package that doesn't make use of the 10 or 12 function keys along the left or upper edge of your PC's keyboard. You've decided to make use of these keys yourself, assigning the F1 key as your read character hot key, F2 as your read line hot key, F3 as your read sentence hot key and F4 as your read paragraph hot key. Additionally, you have decided to use the CTRL and ALT versions of these keys as your previous and next hot keys respectively. And, oh yes, you've also made one other change: instead of using CTRL-X as your Momentary Silence hot key, you've decided to "alter" this hot key slightly and use ALT-X instead. Every one of these keys will work perfectly fine in applications mode, which is to say when you're working with your word processing program. Should you need to enter Review Mode, however, you're going to encounter a bit of conflict. As you will learn in upcoming sections of this manual, Vocal-Eyes uses several of the function keys, the ALT-X key and a few other keys to control some pretty essential features, such as windows, and cursor routing. Also, as you've already learned, pressing F1 from inside Review Mode calls up one of Vocal-Eyes' handy help screens. Vocal-Eyes' Review Mode command keys take precedence over any and all of your user definable hot keys. You have a bypass to next key hot key, but what if you wanted to assign this feature to F10 or ALT-X? How could you bypass a Vocal-Eyes command if you can't get to your bypass hot key in the first place? To solve this dilemma, Vocal-Eyes comes equipped with a special Review Mode bypass command key. It's the ` (grave accent) key. Press this key to bypass any Review Mode command key, such as F1 or ALT-X, and to reach any hot key you may have assigned to these keys. Have you assigned any hot keys to the HOME, END, PgUp or PgDn keys? You will recall from an earlier section of this manual that these keys operate several useful Review Mode features. Pressing Home instructs Vocal-Eyes to read the previous sentence. Pressing CTRL-HOME instructs Vocal-Eyes to read the previous paragraph. Pressing End or CTRL-END instructs Vocal-Eyes to read the next sentence and paragraph respectively. We also showed you how you could use PgUp to express move your cursor to the first character on your line, CTRL-PgUp to move to the upper left hand corner of your current window, and PgDn and CTRL-PgDn to move to the last character on your current line or bottom right hand corner of your current window respectively. As is the case with the other Review Mode command keys we've already mentioned, the HOME, END, PGUP and PgDn commands will always take precedence over any hot keys you may have assigned to use these keys. If, say, you have assigned your HOME key to read the current field data, pressing HOME in Review Mode will still read the previous sentence. If you want to hear your field data, press ` (grave accent) first and then press HOME. Here's another use for the ` bypass command key. Say you're in the Hot Keys menu, and what you'd like to do is assign the ALT-X key to be your Momentary Silence. You cursor down to Option 51 and press ALT-X. What happened? ALT-X is one of the keys you can press to exit the Voice Control Panel, so instead of defining your Momentary Silence hot key you've exited back to your applications program. Try it again. This time, just before pressing ALT-X, press the ` key. This time it worked perfectly, didn't it? Let's review the difference between the ` bypass command key and your user definable bypass hot key. First, it's important to understand the difference between a user definable hot key and one of Vocal-Eyes' Review Mode or Voice Control Panel command keys. Command keys control specific Vocal-Eyes voice functions. Most of these command keys are used in Review Mode, but there are a few, such as the ALT-X express exit command key, that you can use when working inside the Voice Control Panel. These keys cause Vocal-Eyes to perform a specific action, such as reading the previous sentence, or accessing the F1 Help screen. A Vocal-Eyes hot key, on the other hand, can perform any of 62 different functions, as we saw when we explored the Hot Keys menu. You can assign any key to perform any hot key function. Use your user defined bypass to next key "hot key" when what you want to do is bypass another user defined hot key, such as the CTRL-L read line or the CTRL-C read current character hot keys. Use the ` bypass "command key" when you want to bypass any of Vocal-Eyes' predefined command keys, such as the Review Mode HOME or F1 help keys. Remember while in the Hot Keys menu, you can define any keystroke which produces an actual code. If you have the enhanced 101-key keyboard and your system supports its full potential, you will have far more options then those without this keyboard. For example, the 101- key keyboards have a separate cursor pad. These four keys are dedicated to the four arrow keys. If you define this UP ARROW, it is different then if you defined the UP ARROW on the numeric keypad. Regardless of what keyboard you have, the two enter keys you have are considered to be different. You could define the ENTER key from the numeric keypad to read window zero and still be able to use the ENTER key on the standard keyboard without a voice response. Also remember if you wish to define a hot key to one of the keys normally used to control the cursor position in the Hot Keys menu, such as the arrow keys, ALT-X, SPACE BAR, BACKSPACE and all the others, you must first precede the keystroke with a press of the ` (grave accent). This will tell Vocal-Eyes you really want to define the keystroke after the grave accent. If you want to define the grave accent as a hot key simply press it twice. This allows you to define every keystroke on the keyboard if you wish.